Measuring the mediating role of quality education for ensuring employability skills: An analysis of higher education student perception in Bangladesh

not collect any personally identifying information as responses will remain strictly anony- mous. Submission of the Google Form was counted as participant consent. Sample and data collection The study has been carried out at the University of Scholars, Dhaka. The respondents are stu- dents pursuing bachelor’s and master’s programs in the Department of Business Administra- tion and have at least minimum employability experience in part-time or full-time jobs, respectively. The Google Form was disseminated and data from students was collected, start- ing from 1st December 2023, until 31st December 2023, flexibly over a span of 31 days. A total of 154 students responded. Among them, 10 data were discarded for spurious nature. The final data considered 144 participants for further analysis. The valid 144 cases comprise 108 males (75 per cent) and 36 females (25 per cent). According to [42], the prescribed range of 100–150 respondents for obtaining dependable results from structural equation models, the current study’s sample size is adequate. A cross-sectional survey of University of Scholars students was undertaken using the non- probability purposive sampling method. A structured questionnaire was constructed to collect responses for this study. The constructs of employability skills of students (ES), quality educa- tion (QE), course structure (CS), institutional policy (POL), and physical aspects (PA) have a total of 31 question items. Respondents were required to respond with the statements provided

using the seven-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). Prior research [43] state that power analysis is frequently suggested in the PLS-SEM litera- ture for determining the sample size for structural equation modelling. [44] suggest that to Fig 1. The mediating role of quality education for ensuring employability skills in higher education students. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0310815.g001 PLOS ONE Measuring the mediating role of quality education for ensuring employability skills PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0310815 October 7, 2024 7 / 18