Assessing factor structure and reliability of the career adaptability scale in students with special educational needs.

Despite the importance of career guidance and life planning education in helping students' career development, considerably limited research has been done to provide a good educational assessment to identify SEN students' strengths and weaknesses of career adaptability. This study aimed to assess the factor structure of the career adaptability scale in mainstream secondary students with special educational needs. The results support adequate reliabilities of the total scale and subscales of the CAAS-SF among over 200 SEN students. The results also support the four-factor structure of the career adaptability construct in assessing career concern, control, curiosity and confidence. We also found its measurement invariance across gender at the scalar invariance level. The positive and significant correlation patterns between boys' and girls' career adaptability and its sub-dimensions with self-esteem are similar. Overall, this study support that the CAAS-SF is a good measure with adequate psychometric properties for assessing and developing practical career guidance and life planning activities and programs for SEN students to support their career development needs.

Development and initial validation of the job-search self-regulation scale: Expanding the career adaptation model of job search.

Given the pressing issues of unemployment during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic and the underrecognized role of job-search self-regulation (JSSR) in general within career construction theory (CCT), it is socially and theoretically important to expand the career adaption model of job search by examining the role of JSSR in predicting job-search outcomes. However, a psychometrically sound measure of JSSR is lacking. Study 1 used a sample of U.S. unemployed individuals (n = 300) to develop and explore the factor structure of a measure of JSSR. Study 2 tracked a sample of U.S. unemployed individuals (n = 399) to validate the JSSR by examining its structural, concurrent, and predictive validities. Study 2 also examined the mediation of the JSSR subscales in the links from career adaptability to subsequent employment status and job-search progress (JSP). The results supported the psychometric soundness of the newly developed JSSR and demonstrated that JSSR behaviors mediated the positive predictions of career adaptability resources for subsequent employment status and JSP. Therefore, the present study offers a measure of JSSR for future research and practice and highlights JSSR as an important adapting response. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Therapeutic Collaboration in Career Construction Counseling: Case Studies of an Integrative Model.

The mapping of therapeutic collaboration throughout counseling deepens our understanding of how the helping relationship fosters client change. To better understand the process of career construction counseling (CCC), we analyzed the therapeutic collaboration on six successful face-to-face cases. The participants were six Portuguese adults, five women and one man, real clients of a career counseling service, and four psychologists, three female and one male trained in the career intervention model. The participants completed demographic questions and measures of career certainty, vocational identity, career indecision, and psychological functioning. The Therapeutic Collaboration Coding System was used to track collaboration throughout all interactive episodes. The clinical significance of the intervention was calculated by analyzing pre-post-test statistical differences for each case, with the Reliable Change Index and Z score. The findings evidenced a pattern of therapeutic collaboration evolution for good outcome cases. Based on this pattern, we propose a model of process-outcome evolution for the three phases of CCC.