Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Development and Validation of a Career Resilience Scale for Adults with Disabilities
Data is provided by the student.
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.
