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Development and Validation of the Strengths Self-Efficacy Scale (SSES)

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Journal of Career Assessment

Published online on

Abstract

The Strengths Self-Efficacy scale (SSES) was developed to allow career counselors, educators, and researchers to assess individuals’ perceived abilities to build their personal strengths and apply them in their daily life. An exploratory factor analysis was conducted with 275 adults and resulted in one factor: general strengths self-efficacy. The internal consistency was .96 and SSES was weakly related to social desirability. A confirmatory factor analysis was performed using another sample of 302 adults, and results verified the one-factor structure. The results suggested that the 11-item SSES demonstrated strong internal consistency (α = .95) and that SSES scores were moderately related to self-esteem and life satisfaction and weakly related to social desirability. Finally, a test–retest reliability analysis on a sample of 36 adults indicated that SSES scores were stable over a 3-week period. Implications for career counseling and mental health practices as well as research applications of this new measure were discussed.