Salvatore Soresi

• University of Padua

This paper reports the development and psychometric requisites of the Career Confidence for Activities in the Future (CCAF). This scale of 25 items assesses adolescents’ self-efficacy beliefs about the capacity to learn and execute professional activities necessary to handle six global challenges. These are the safeguard of the environment and life...

Today’s youth have grown up according to a largely neoliberal dominance. To assess youth’s views of the economy in relation to their career choices, we developed the Economy and Career Choices Scale (ECCS). Two studies involving Italian youth were conducted to develop the scale and examine its psychometric properties. Exploratory factor analysis (E...

Cos’è oggi l’orientamento scolastico, come funziona, come è cambiato nel tempo, come se ne possono comprendere a fondo i principi, individuandone i punti forti e le criticità? Questo volume, concepito come supporto a docenti, dirigenti scolastici, educatori, famiglie, si pone l’obiettivo di offrire una cassetta degli attrezzi utile a favorire la co...

Sustainable development goals are used as guidance for future career and life design. The importance of including young people in the sustainability process is recognized also by recent vocational guidance literature. Nevertheless, the assessment of the Sustainable Development Goals itself presents a challenge. For these reasons, we validated a spe...

Although different assessment instruments have been developed to assess decent work, there is a need for a new instrument that takes into consideration the importance of decent work in achieving sustainable development. This article reports the development and psychometric requisites of the Decent Work for Inclusive and Sustainable Future Construct...

An online group of career counseling for unemployed young adults during the COVID-19 pandemic was developed. Twelve participants were involved in online group career counseling intervention, based on the Life Design for an inclusive and sustainable future. Results indicated at post-test on increased scores on career adaptability, resilience, future...

Asylum seekers experience conditions of social disadvantage, poor labor market outcomes, and low-paid jobs. Therefore, vocational guidance and career counseling must function as a supportive social practice for asylum seekers giving voice to them and focusing on their strengths, such as courage. The present study examined the personal stories of co...

Young precarious workers are increasingly exposed to forms of discrimination, inequality, and poverty; therefore, it is crucial to listen to their voices and increase their awareness of the characteristics of decent work. We examined stories of courage among 40 emerging adult precarious workers using a hybrid, qualitative approach involving a thema...

Societies today are highly complex and often impacted by uncertainty, rapid change, globalization, and inequality, all of which have significant impact on the wellbeing of people. These changes make it more difficult not only for a great part of the population to live in the present, but also for succeeding generations to aspire to and imagine a po...

To address twenty-first century challenges, Niles, Amundson, and Neault (2011) developed the Hope-Centered Model of Career Development (HCMCD) from which they derived the Hope-Centered Career Inventory (including domains of hope, self-reflection, self-clarity, visioning, goal setting/planning, implementing, and adapting). The current study tests th...

As we already had the opportunity to highlight, the ‘Glorious Thirty’ has been a period of social progress for the Western context. During the said period, sectors of society that used to have a passive role began mobilizing making their instances clear, widening and spreading rights.

In recent years, we are witnessing a reversal of the foundations of modernity, that saw the future as a symbol of development. Thanks to progress and growth, considered as ‘perpetual’ movements of history, the individual did not need to think about tomorrow, because it came by itself, every day could only be better (Pulcini, 2019).

When preparing this chapter, we thought about the stories of people who stood out in culture, sports, arts, show business, science, politics. People who gave a large contribution to the above-mentioned fields, and they experienced levels of satisfaction, recently described by a colleague in a volume (Scandella, 2019). When reading those professiona...

Based on the observations presented in the previous chapter, it seems clear that in the field of career counseling and vocational designing we can no longer avoid considering that we are living in very different times with respect to the so-called ‘Glorious Thirty’.

As we have already mentioned before, today we live in a context characterized by uncertainty, complexity, change, globalization, inequality. All these phenomena have a great impact on the wellbeing of people, groups, and communities.

Career guidance needs new perspectives, considering the challenges that characterize our future, and it cannot exist without solidarity, inclusion, and attention to environmental challenges. It should also positively influence stakeholders to invest in the values of the 2030 Agenda recently proposed by the United Nations, and its encouragement to t...

Career guidance needs new perspectives considering challenges that characterized our future, and it can not exist without solidarity, inclusion, and attention to the environmental challenges. It also should be able to positively influence stakeholders to invest in the values of the 2030 Agenda recently proposed by the United Nations and their encou...

Based on the life design paradigm and career construction adaptation model and on recent directions from the perspective of sustainable and inclusive career guidance, the study aimed at examining the relationship between career adaptability, the tendency to consider systemic challenges to attain sustainable development, and state personal and socia...

The world in which we are living is considered at high risk because of social, economic, and environmental crises that are much more worrying and pervasive than those of the past century, such as natural disasters, ecological uncertainty, public health crises, extreme social inequity, and rising violence. In connection therewith, career guidance ac...

This book is based on the Life Design paradigm and discusses the efforts made to overcome the matching paradigm between individuals and their work contexts, in order to guarantee the adoption of an active role for future career planning. Starting from the evolution of career counselling and vocational guidance in the 20th century and then following...

This article reports the development and psychometric requisites of Visions About Future (VAF), a measure to assess optimism, pessimism, and hope in early adolescence. Two different studies involving Italian middle school students were conducted. With the first study, the items were developed and the factor structure verified by using item analysis...

Background: This study evaluated the impact of a structured 10-didactic units intervention on promoting the school inclusion of elementary school students with intellectual disability (ID). Method: The intervention was devised for 152 Italian typically developing (TD) elementary school students that were randomly assigned to the experimental (EG) o...

The field of transition—and the Division on Career Development and Transition (DCDT)—was built upon a foundation established by theories of career development that emerged in the 1950s and 1960s and paved the way for the work/study movement of the 1960s and the vocational and career education for students with disabilities movement that dominated t...

Based on analysis of the related literature, this chapter discusses the attitudes and competences that should be promoted to better prepare doctoral students in career guidance and counseling to become tomorrow’s successful scholars. Three main areas of focus have been identified. The first is development of good professional practices, including:...

Whilst in the last decades of the twentieth century there has been some improvement in the employment situation for people with disability, in most countries unemployment, poverty and dependence are common experiences for the overwhelming majority of people with vulnerability (Barnes C: Understanding the social model of disability: past, present an...

This article reports the development and psychometric properties of visions about future (VAF), an instrument assessing hope, optimism, and pessimism. Three different studies involving Italian adolescents were conducted. With the first study 22 items were developed and the factor structure was verified. The second study, involving a second sample o...

The chapter will explore steps that might be taken within the context of schools to encourage the creation of an inclusive social environment. In particular, it examines the roles played by parents of children with and without disability, as co-constructing agents of inclusion. Particular emphasis will be placed on parental attributes of hope, opti...

A career intervention based on life design approach was devised for a group of young adults at risk for the process of career construction. It was aimed at fostering a series of resources useful to cope with career transitions, to encourage reflection on the future, to identify one?s own strengths, and to plan future projects. Results of the study...

Background Parents of children with intellectual disability (ID) have been found to be more likely to experience lower levels of life satisfaction than parents of typically developing children as a result of the increased challenges they experience. Based on a life design approach, which emphasises the role of career adaptability and resilience in...

Aim The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of several dimensions of functioning on satisfaction for quality of life (QoL) experienced by visually impaired older adults. Participants A sample of 58 older adults (37 women and 21 men) was involved in the study. Their age ranged from 50 to 88 years (M=68.95, SD=1.51). They were charac...

The Cambridge Handbook of International Prevention Science offers a comprehensive global overview on prevention science with the most up-to-date research from around the world. Over 100 scholars from 27 different countries (including Australia, Bhutan, Botswana, India, Israel, Mexico, Singapore, South Korea, Spain and Thailand) contributed to this...

During the last decades within the field of vocational psychology a growing interest has been devoted to the issue of educational and professional barriers. They may hinder adolescents' processes of career planning and are exacerbated by the instability and precariousness that characterize today's world of work. Understanding obstacles adolescents...

The study is aimed at providing the development and initial validation of the Design My Future (DMF), which may be administered in career counseling and research activities to assess adolescents' future orientation and resilience. Two studies with two independent samples of Italian adolescents were conducted to examine psychometric requisites of DM...

Using contemporary digital technology offers possibilities for better engaging youth in constructing their future careers. This study describes and initially tests the effectiveness of an online career intervention based on life-design principles. Middle school students were assigned to either a traditional test interpretationbased intervention gro...

According to literature, quality of life in MS is frequently compromised, with a significant role played by cognitive functioning, in particular by executive components. Given the relevance of these processes in dealing with personal and work life demands, the role of executive functioning was investigated. Psychological models of quality of life w...

This article reports the development and psychometric requisites of Design My Future, an instrument assessing future orientation and resilience. Three different studies involving Italian preadolescents were conducted. With the first the items were developed and the factor structure verified; the second confirmed instrument’s multidimensional struct...

Our considerations, in reply to Giangreco, Doyle and Suter's (2012) paper, are grouped into different sections: reflections related to the history of inclusion in Italy that have led to disassociate the 'special' visions, and accept the necessity to adopt, together with quantitative analyses, qualitative and contextual approaches that also take int...

Participation in work, school and leisure activities provides young people with important opportunities to develop their vocational identities and career pathways; it also plays a crucial role in their school-to-work transition processes. Three studies to devise the Working, Studying, and Leisure Time Questionnaire, which assesses adolescents' conc...

The present study examined the relationship between problem-solving appraisal (problem-solving inventory), various personality styles (Myers–Briggs Type Indicator), and learning strategies. Specifically, it was hypothesized that problem solving appraisal would mediate, fully or partially, the relationship between personality styles and learning str...

During preadolescence children start to give attention to the future, to formulate thoughts, and to wonder about what they want. They also acquire knowledge and experiment with strategies to assist them in designing their future career. Among the constructs that can now play a relevant role in life designing, the four resources of career adaptabili...

We explored the perception and actual occupational knowledge of jobs on career exploration across Holland’s categories in 60 elementary and 60 middle school students. Results showed a closer relationship between career exploration and actual knowledge than children’s perception of knowledge. We found higher levels of actual knowledge and perception...

INTRODUCTION Considering the times we are living in, we can say that change is a significant actor. Even if it has always characterised human beings’ history, change is now going so fast that new ways of thinking about society, well-being, the future and work are emerging (Nota, Soresi, Ferrari & Ginevra, 2014). During recent years, at least in Wes...

Participation in work, school and leisure activities provides young people with important opportunities to develop their vocational identities and career pathways; it also plays acrucial role in their school-to-work transition processes. Three studies to devise the Working, Studying, and Leisure Time Questionnaire, which assesses adolescents'concep...

Using a sample of 242 Italian high school students, we examined the direct relation of hope and optimism on four dimensions of career adaptability (i.e. curiosity, confidence, control, and concern) as well as the mediating effect of these four adaptability dimensions on the relations of hope and optimism on the sub-components of satisfaction. The r...

Over the last decade, the rapidly changing job market has begun to demand that people more actively construct their professional lives and acquire career adaptability. In this chapter, after a presentation of the recent models and theoretical approaches that recognize the need to carefully consider the role of career adaptability to face, pursue, o...

Historically, the condition we now refer to as intellectual disability has been conceptualized using models that were extension of the medical model. Recent advances, however, have emphasized person-environment fit models of disability that view disability, intellectual, and other cognitive disabilities, as the lack of fit between a person's capaci...

This article aims to illuminate new challenges in the field of vocational designing and career counseling in assisting persons planning for an uncertain and difficult future in the current economic climate in European and other Western nations. The first part of the paper starts with an analysis of the European socioeconomic context and provides a...

Background: The present study aims to determine quality of life and self-efficacy beliefs among young adults with cleft lip and palate (CLP), as compared with a control group of young adults without CLP. The study involves two groups of young adults: 48 with CLP and 48 presenting no disability. Methods: Two questionnaires (Quality of Life Questionn...

Increasingly, scholars are urging that there should be a careful examination of the role of social relations, especially those between parents and children, on the professional development of youth. In this chapter, we first present the recent models and theoretical approaches (e.g., contextual action theory, social cognitive model, and the life de...

Studies in the literature clearly show that the effects of executive dysfunctions on day-to-day life are relevant for both functional independence and for active participation to social and work life. In times we are currently living, studying executive functioning and developing knowledge on these skills is particularly relevant. It is compelling...

This study tested for the measurement equivalence of a four-factor measure of career indecision (Career Indecision Profile-65 [CIP-65]) between a U.S. sample and two international samples; one composed of French-speaking young adults from France and Switzerland and the other of Italian adolescents. Previous research had supported the four-factor st...

The Oxford Handbook of Positive Psychology and Disability is the first comprehensive text providing a foundation for research and practice focusing on positive attributes of disability. The handbook’s introductory chapters introduce a paradigmatic change in how disability itself is understood, leading to the opportunity to focus research and practi...

This study examines the importance of work in life of people with disability and then focuses on employer attitudes towards these people. In the light of Stone and Colella's model, the study examines the employer attitudes and the role of variables such as type of disability, employer experience in the hiring of persons with disabilities, the descr...

The functional theory of self-determination (fSDT) defines and operationalises self-determination within a human agentic context. It emerged from research on adolescents with disabilities, however has been increasingly applied to youth without disabilities. While comparability has been evaluated in youth with and without disabilities, it has not be...

The Problem Solving Inventory (PSI) is one of the most widely used applied problem-solving measures in the United States. The purpose of this research was to examine the psychometric properties of the PSI within Italian adolescent samples. Four separate data sets were used in this investigation involving 5,100 Italian adolescents. The first study r...

Background: Literature has shown that work maintenance is central in order to guarantee participation to persons with disability. Knowledge about potential sources of difficulties and obstacles is then crucial in order to prevent barriers and facilitate work maintenance and career development for persons with disabilities. Objective: Studies ana...

The goal of the present study was to test the psychometric properties of the Italian version of the Career Decision-Making Profile (CDMP) questionnaire with a sample of 1,835 adolescents. Gati, Landman, Davidovitch, Asulin-Peretz, and Gadassi suggested that the way individuals make career decisions should not be described by a single decision-makin...

Over the last decade, occupational changes have the rapidly changing job market has begun to demand that people more actively construct their professional lives and acquire career adaptability. The aim of the present study was to develop a specific, new instrument, "Career and Work Adaptability", to assess degree of adaptability in adolescents plan...

The Career Adapt-Abilities Scale (CAAS)-Italian Form consists of four 6-item scales, which measure concern, control, curiosity, and confidence as psychosocial resources for managing occupational transitions, developmental tasks, and work traumas. The 24-item CAAS-Italian Form is identical to the International Form 2.0. The factor structure was simi...

A structured 10-didactic unit intervention was devised to foster adolescents’ time perspective and career decidedness. The study was conducted with 50 adolescents who were selected from a group of 624; 25 of the participants were randomly assigned to the control group and 25 were assigned to the experimental group. They were selected according to t...

Nell’ambito dei servizi psichiatrici territoriali e più in generale dei servizi alla persona, uno degli sforzi più complessi e articolati riguarda l’inserimento sociale e lavorativo di persone con disturbo psichiatrico. Tale complessità è dovuta alla natura stessa della disabilità mentale che si può associare a deterioramento cognitivo e che spesso...

Self-determination is a general psychological construct within the organizing structure of theories of human agentic behavior. People who are self-determined act volitionally to serve as the causal agent in their lives. To provide a fuller understanding of the self-determination of adolescents, this study collected data on self-determination, quali...

The Scale for Interpersonal Behavior (SIB) is a 50-item multidimensional measure of difficulty and distress in assertiveness. The SIB assesses negative assertion, expression of and dealing with personal limitations, initiating assertiveness and positive assertion. The SIB was originally developed in the Netherlands. The present study attempted to r...

Over the last few decades, advances and innovations in the field of disability and disability supports have resulted in changes in the way in which disability itself is understood and conceptualised. These changes, which embrace a person–environment fit model of disability, have obvious implications for disability supports and research. Within such...

Relations among anticipated vocations, self-assessments of competence, and interests in sample of 190 Italian children were examined. Children were asked what activities they liked, those they thought they were good at, and what job they expected when they grew up. The responses were coded into RIASEC Holland codes and agreement across the three qu...

At the beginning of the 21st century, a new social arrangement of work poses a series of questions and challenges to scholars who aim to help people develop their working lives. Given the globalization of career counseling, we decided to address these issues and then to formulate potentially innovative responses in an international forum. We used t...

Career choices involve an orientation towards the future and the propensity to planning. The ‘mental picture’ of the past, present and future was defined by Savickas as time perspective. The present paper reports the findings of two studies examining time perspective in Italian adolescents. The first study surveyed 498 students aged 11–14 years, an...

At the beginning of the 21st century, a new social arrangement of work poses a series of questions and challenges to scholars who aim to help people develop their working lives. Given the globalization of career counseling, we decided to address these issues and then to formulate potentially innovative responses in an international forum. We used t...

At the beginning of the 21st century, a new social arrangement of work poses a series of questions and challenges to scholars who aim to help people develop their working lives. Given the globalization of career counseling, we decided to address these issues and then to formulate potentially innovative responses in an international forum. We used t...

The problem-solving inventory (PSI) is the most widely used applied problem-solving measure in the United States. Although a great deal of validity and reliability information exists for the PSI, much of this data has been collected in the United States. The purpose of this study was to examine the PSI’s psychometric estimates with a large sample o...

At the beginning of the 21st century, a new social arrangement of work poses a series of questions and challenges to scholars who aim to help people develop their working lives. Given the globalization of career counseling, we decided to address these issues and then to formulate potentially innovative responses in an international forum. We used t...

a b s t r a c t This study examined the role of supportive relationships (i.e., family, teacher, and peer) and agency (i.e., self-efficacy, motivation, and goal-setting orientation) on three outcomes: aca-demic grades, distress, and career decidedness. Data from 588 middle school youth from Northern (N = 322) and Southern (N = 266) Italy were analy...

This study was an examination of the validity of Krumboltz's Career Beliefs Inventory in a sample of Italian high school students (N = 256). The factor structure was examined at the item level using exploratory factor analysis. A five-factor structure emerged during analysis highlighting beliefs about Career Confidence, Career Activity, Career Inde...

The literature places special focus on the quality of life (QoL) of individuals with disability and on their self-determination and social and work participation. The field of vocational guidance also considers the satisfaction these individuals experience concerning their future crucial to their QoL. At the same time, however, persons with disabil...

To analyze the conception of work and its relationship with the various indices of progress in career development, we administered a structured, open-ended questionnaire that explored beliefs about working among a sample of Italian high school students considering university options. Using both quantitative and qualitative methods, we found that th...

People's ideas about work can greatly affect the ways in which they characterize their own work experience and their lives. The first aim of the present study was to analyze the concept of work in individuals with mild or moderate intellectual disability working in competitive or sheltered work settings and, second, to compare the notions of work o...

The social cognitive model that analyzes processes of choice about the future emphasizes the dynamics of the human being and the active role individuals have in self-determining their own actions. Self-efficacy beliefs have a particularly important role in that and affect the processes that are involved in career choice. Enabling individuals to hav...

In the last ten years important theoretical and applicative changes have taken place in the disability field that also have significant consequences for school-career guidance. Therefore, before dealing with the issue of career guidance for persons with disabilities it is appropriate to recall the new disability conceptualisations, formulated betwe...

Research has been paying increasing attention to the psychopathological problems and psychiatric disorders in intellectual disability (ID). Psychiatric problems are most often observed in individuals with mild to moderate ID and self destructive and autistic-type behaviors are more frequent in individuals with severe ID. Moreover, persons living in...

Industrial/organizational researchers have reported that realistic job previews diminish prospective workers' expectations but promote the satisfaction and persistence of those who ultimately accept a job assignment. The authors applied this strategy to the context of school-to-college transition; 354 Italian high school students were provided with...

Background: The international literature has documented that self-determination is impacted by environmental factors, including living or work settings; and by intraindividual factors, including intelligence level, age, gender, social skills and adaptive behaviour. In addition, self-determination has been correlated with improved quality of life (...

Abstract The birth of a child with a disability entails the revision of roles and a consideration of the partners’ tasks and activities, the reallocation of financial resources, and a whole range of new behaviors to cope with the needs of the newcomer. It is important to analyze the quality of life experienced by parents and families of children wi...

Abstract  The quality of life experienced by social and healthcare professionals is among the factors that contribute to the definition of quality of service. Other factors seemingly in relation with experienced quality of life concern one’s own efficacy, beliefs, and burnout. The present study intended to verify the relations that existed between...

Family support has been found to influence both career self-efficacy beliefs and career decision making. The purpose of this study was to verify whether career search self-efficacy could mediate the relationship between family support and career indecision.Using a sample of 253 Italian youth, the study found that, for male adolescents attending a u...