Validation of the Childhood Career Development Scale Among Italian Middle School Students

During early adolescence, individuals engage in exploring educational opportunities, beginning to develop a career identity, contemplate future careers, and make tentative career decisions. Choices made during this period may have a strong effect on one’s academic and career future, and in many countries, young adolescents must make important and sometimes final academic and career choices that impact the rest of their lives. Despite this, research on early adolescence is severely lacking. To address this gap, a validation study of the Childhood Career Development Scale (CCDS) was conducted with a young adolescent Italian sample. Consistent with previous research with younger samples, support was found for an eight-factor structure of the CCDS. Convergent validity was supported by positive associations with exploration, students’ ideas, attitudes, and behaviors regarding their academic and career future and career self-efficacy. These findings support Super’s dimensional model of childhood career development through early adolescence as originally theorized.