ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Occupational Health and Safety
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1664966
The relationship between coping styles and career adaptability in telecommunications employees: Chain mediation of anxiety and general self-efficacy
Provisionally accepted
Zhenyu Pan1
Hanzhong Zhang1
Xinqing Xu1
Jingjing Song1Jinghua Zhu1Jiangang Shao2*
Yalei Li3*
Liping Jia1*- 1Department of Psychology, Shandong Second Medical University, Weifang, China, weifang, China
- 2Department of Network Center, Shandong Second Medical University, Weifang, China, weifang, China
- 3Department of Public Health, Shandong Second Medical University, Weifang, China, weifang, China
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Objective: The rapid growth of the digital economy demands higher professional competence and adaptability from telecommunications employees. Therefore, it is particularly important to explore the influencing mechanism of career adaptability of telecommunications employees. Methods: A survey was conducted among 9475 employees of telecommunication companies in 16 cities in Shandong Province using the Simple Coping Style Scale, Depression-Anxiety-Stress Scale, General Self-Efficacy Scale and Career Adaptability Scale. The collected data were processed and analyzed using SPSS 26.0. Mediation analysis was conducted using Hayes' PROCESS macro (Model 6) with bootstrapping. Results: The results of correlation analysis showed that there was a significant correlation between coping style, anxiety, general self-efficacy and career adaptability of telecommunications employees (p<0.01). Anxiety and general self-efficacy were identified as mediating factors between coping style and career adaptability, accounting for 4.522% and 28.334% of the total effect, respectively. At the same time, anxiety and general self-efficacy played a chain mediating effect between coping style and career adaptability, accounting for 12.059% of the total effect. This is a provisional file, not the final typeset article Conclusion: This study found that coping style may directly affect career adaptability, and may also affect general self-efficacy through anxiety level, which in turn affects career adaptability. The results emphasize the importance of coping skills, emotion management and self-cognition, which is of great significance for improving the mental health level and career development ability of telecommunications employees.
Keywords: telecommunication employees, Coping styles, Anxiety, general self-efficacy, careeradaptability
Received: 13 Jul 2025; Accepted: 09 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Pan, Zhang, Xu, Song, Zhu, Shao, Li and Jia. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Jiangang Shao, Department of Network Center, Shandong Second Medical University, Weifang, China, weifang, China
Yalei Li, Department of Public Health, Shandong Second Medical University, Weifang, China, weifang, China
Liping Jia, Department of Psychology, Shandong Second Medical University, Weifang, China, weifang, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.