Methods for measuring career readiness of high school students: based on multidimensional item response theory and text mining

In contemporary society, career readiness holds paramount significance for individual life, exerting a direct influence on initial employment, job satisfaction, and the sense of career identity. Framed within multidimensional item response theory and text mining, this study embarks on exploring assessment methodologies for high school students’ career readiness by revising the “Career Readiness Questionnaire – Adolescent Version” and employing text mining techniques. Study One collected 1261 valid data points through cluster sampling. With the aid of Bayesian multivariate item response theory parameter estimation procedures and R language, the career readiness measurement tool was revised, yielding a concise scale that aligns with psychometric requirements. The research findings indicated that the concept of “career readiness” is more suitable for the multidimensional graded response model than for the bifactor model. The dataset’s discrimination parameters fell within the range of [1.59, 3.84], the difficulty parameters fell between [−2.91, 2.24], and the peak values of the maximum information functions fell within [0.24, 2.35]. After six items with the lowest peaks were removed (Items 4, 5, 6, 31, 32, and 33), the remaining 30 items composed the Chinese concise version “Career Readiness Questionnaire – Adolescent Version,” with discrimination parameters ranging from [1.45, 3.38], difficulty parameters between [−3.31, 1.76], and maximum information function peaks within [0.50, 2.64]. Building upon the effective participants from Study One, Study Two matched questionnaire data with textual information, resulting in 1012 valid participants. Leveraging text mining, a machine learning model was constructed to predict high school students’ career readiness based on essay texts. The results of Study 2 prove that the revised lexicon was more accurate in feature extraction. Building upon this, the machine learning model for essay text demonstrated excellent performance in predicting career readiness, with random forest outperforming the other algorithms. This study provides a novel approach for schools and parents to comprehend the state of career readiness among high school students, offering a convenient and effective tool for educational activities related to students’ career development.