Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Identifier

6346

Date

2018

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Department

Counseling Psychology

Committee Chair

Douglas Strohmer

Committee Member

Chrisann Schiro-Geist

Committee Member

Michael Mackay

Committee Member

Suzanne Lease

Committee Member

Richard Lightsey

Abstract

Adults with disabilities face multiple internal, social, and systemic barriers that hamperefforts to attain and maintain meaningful employment. In order to achieve success in vocational pursuits, individuals with disabilities must demonstrate perseverance in the face of probable adversity; this construct is career resilience. No scale has been developed to measure a persons career resilience that is specifically tailored to people with disabilities. The purpose of this study was to develop an instrument to measure the career resilience of adults with disabilities. After creating the Career Resilience for Adults with Disabilities Scale (CRADS), two studies were conducted to evaluate the scale. Study 1 used an Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) to determine the CRADS structure. Study 2 focused on establishing validity and reliability for the CRADS. EFA supported a three-factor taxonomy for the CRADS. Coefficient alphas for the three subscales ranged .71 - .79 with the full-scale coefficient alpha being .84. Differences in CRADS scores were found between adults with disabilities who were currently employed and those unemployed and not actively looking for work, suggesting the scales utility to discriminate between groups with high and low career resilience. The CRADS is a brief, self-report measure of career resilience with sound psychometric properties for early research in the domain of career resilience for adults with disabilities.

Comments

Data is provided by the student.

Library Comment

Dissertation or thesis originally submitted to the local University of Memphis Electronic Theses & dissertation (ETD) Repository.

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