DEVELOPMENT OF THE CAREER OPTIMISM SCALE FOR UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

Abstract

This study aimed to develop and validate Career Optimism Scale (COS) for university students. Items were developed based on related literature, similar scales used in and out of Turkey, student interviews and experts’ reviews. The evidences of validity and reliability results were tested with certain analyses. One of them was exploratory factor analysis (EFA, N=339) revealed that Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin index was .950 and Bartlett test significant. Convergent validity (N=140) indicated that Pearson correlation coefficients between the Career Futures Inventory (CFI) and COS was .79, and career optimism subscale of CFI and COS was .73. Also Cronbach Alpha was .94, and test-retest reliability (N=50) were .85. In addition, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA, N=295) validated a four-factor structure obtained from EFA. These results presented that COS had adequate psychometric properties of a reliable and valid tool. COS resulted in 23 item, 5 point Likert-type, four sub-factors which constructed as a unidimensional model. In the light of these results, implications and recommendations are discussed.