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Introduction
Graduate employability has been discussed for some time, but it has been termed a "slippery concept" due to difficulties with definition and conceptual clarity (e.g. [32] Pegg et al. , 2012; [38] Sewell and Dacre Pool, 2010). There are now more widely accepted definitions. For example, [42] Yorke (2006) defines it as "a set of achievements - skills, understandings and personal attributes - that makes graduates more likely to gain employment and be successful in their chosen occupations, which benefits themselves, the workforce, the community and the economy" (p. 8). There are also models of graduate employability that help to explain how students can develop these skills, understandings and personal attributes (e.g. [13] Dacre Pool and Sewell, 2007; [23] Knight and Yorke, 2004). As a concept, graduate employability shares some commonality with the concept of graduate attributes, defined as "the qualities, skills and understandings a university community agrees its students should develop during their time with the institution. These attributes include, but go beyond the disciplinary expertise or technical knowledge that has traditionally formed the core of most university courses" ([7] Bowden et al. , 2000, p. 1).
Although graduate employability as a concept has received considerable attention within Higher Education (HE) (please see [40] Tomlinson, 2012 for a detailed review of conceptual and empirical themes from the past decade), there is limited empirical research that tests the available theoretical models or explores how university students perceive their employability development in this field ([36] Rothwell et al. , 2009). This could partly be attributed to a lack of valid diagnostic tools or measurement instruments appropriate for this purpose.
How to, and indeed whether we should attempt to, measure graduate employability is a highly contentious issue. Currently in the UK, the measure mostly associated with graduate employability is an annual survey (Destinations of Leavers from HE or DHLE) which looks at the number of graduates who secure full-time "graduate jobs" within six months of graduation. This information is used to rank HE institutions into league tables that purport to indicate the success of universities in relation to the employability of their graduates. Quite simply, getting a job within six months of graduating=graduate employability, but conflating "employment" with "employability" is a matter of concern ([32] Pegg