Mental health of new and recent graduates during the university-to-work transition: a scoping review protocol

University students face challenges when starting their careers and entering the workforce after tertiary education is associated with negative psychological outcomes. The planned scoping review will synthesise the literature on the impact of university-to-work transitions on the mental health of new and recent graduates. We will describe the characteristics and main findings of the studies, and will examine the variables associated with, and the theories used to explain, the relationship between transitions to work and graduates' mental health.

We will search the following databases: Scopus, Web of Science, ERIC, PSYCINFO, Social Sciences Citation Index, CINAHL Plus, Ovid MEDLINE and Google Scholar, to locate published and unpublished literature. The included studies will focus on undergraduate and postgraduate university students during planned or current university-to-work transitions, as well as early-career workers. We will include studies involving people who have left or are in their final year of study, are undergoing career transition preparation or have worked for no longer than 3 years since graduation. Studies from all countries, those published in English and since 2000, will be included. We will use a set of predefined search terms and we will extract studies using the EndNote V.20 reference management software. Two reviewers will screen and assess the identified studies using the Covidence software. Finally, we will present the data in a summary table and will qualitatively analyse the studies using thematic analysis.

Our scoping review does not require ethical approval. The scoping review's findings will be disseminated in peer-reviewed journal articles and conference presentations, and will inform the development of training resources for different stakeholders as part of a wider research project.

The study has been registered with the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/gw86x).