Abstract

CARNEIRO PINTO, Joana; TAVEIRA, Maria do Céu; FARIA, Liliana  and  CANDEIAS, Adelinda. Social Competence and Career Development: Validation of a Scale with Secondary Students. Univ. Psychol. [online]. 2015, vol.14, n.3, pp.889-898. ISSN 1657-9267.  https://doi.org/10.11144/Javeriana.upsy14-3.sccd.

This paper presents a validation study of the Perceived Social Competence in Career Scale (SCCarS). The sample included 571 adolescents, 283 girls (49.6%) and 287 boys (50.3%), aged 14 to 25 years old (µ=16.33 + 1.41), 10^th and 11^th grade students attending secondary schools in the northern, central and southern Portugal. Exploratory factor analysis indicates the presence of eight factors, with eigenvalues superior to 1.00, explaining 79.16% of the total variance of the items. Confirmatory factor analysis provided support to the factorial structure of eight factors, with adequate fit indices (X²/ df=4.229, CFI= 0.909, GFI= 0.869, RMSEA= 0.079, p= 0.000). These results are consistent with the factorial structure found in previous studies carried out with Portuguese samples from 8^th grade. Implications are drawn related to the need for further study of the psychometric characteristics of the SCCarS with young people from different age groups.

Keywords : social competence; career development; adolescents; confirmatory factor analysis.

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