Professional staff in universities: Career needs, values, attitudes and behaviours

Abstract

This article outlines a concurrent complementarity, mixed methods research design to explore the careers of university professional staff through the application of a contemporary career profile framework. Two hundred and twenty-six participants from Australia and the UK completed a multi-method questionnaire. Integration occurred at three points: the conceptualisation stage using a multi-method instrument; the experiential stage where the quantitative data results acted as a priori themes for the theoretical thematic analysis; and the inferential stage where both convergent and divergent triangulation of the results took place to provide a broader and deeper understanding of the phenomenon under study. This methodological design aims to demonstrate the usefulness of mixed methods in carrying out careers research. The findings extend the career profile theory by highlighting individual needs, related behaviours and outcomes and by suggesting that there are various psychological mechanisms acting to drive career behaviours.