The Impact of Internship Quality on Pre-Service Early Childhood Teachers’ Career Choice Intentions

All participants had completed an ≥8-week teaching practicum and provided informed consent for anonymized data use.The dataset includes four core validated scales (all measured on 5-point Likert formats):Internship Quality:​ 13 items adapted from the Job Characteristics Scale (Hackman & Oldham, 1974), assessing skill diversity, task identity, task importance, autonomy, and feedback during practicum placements.Internship Satisfaction:​ 28 items from the Preschool Education Teaching Internship Satisfaction Questionnaire (Dan et al., 2018), covering satisfaction with internship duration, content, base institutions, management, on-site mentors, and school leadership.Proactive Personality:​ 10 items from the Proactive Personality Scale (Bateman & Crant, 1993), measuring individuals’ tendency to initiate change and seek opportunities.Career Entry Intention:​ 3 items adapted from career commitment measures (Meyer & Allen, 1991), capturing current willingness, long-term commitment, and persistence in choosing the ECE profession when alternative options are available.Demographic variables include gender, age, and academic level (undergraduate/associate degree), with regional stratification (northern vs. southern China).

Rigorous quality control was applied: 12 responses with patterned answers and 11 cases with ≥30% missing data were excluded, yielding a final effective response rate of 94.50%. Cronbach’s α coefficients for all scales exceeded 0.80 (overall α = 0.977), confirming high reliability. The dataset supports replication of the moderated mediation analysis presented in the associated manuscript, including structural equation modeling of direct, indirect, and interaction effects.