The College of Education announces the final Dissertation of

Eric Suedmeyer

for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

February 19, 2018 at 10:30 am in 103 Ball Hall

Major Advisor: Douglas Strohmer, PhD

Development of the Career Resilience Scale for Adults with Disabilities

ABSTRACT: Adults with disabilities face multiple internal, social, and systemic barriers that hamper efforts to attain and maintain meaningful employment. In order to achieve success in vocational pursuits, individuals with disabilities must demonstrate perseverance in the face of probable adversity; this construct is career resilience. Unfortunately, no scale has been developed to measure a person’s career resilience that is specifically tailored to assess one’s ability to rebound from career stressors related to one’s disability. The purpose of this study is to develop an instrument to measure the career resilience of adults with disabilities. After creating the Career Resilience for Adults with Disabilities Scale (CRADS) the author used two samples of 169 and 129 adults with disabilities to examine its psychometric characteristics and finalize the scale’s structure and content. Results indicated the CRADS is a reliable measure with a three-subscale factor structure. Differences in CRADS scores were found between adults with disabilities who were currently employed and those unemployed and not actively looking for work.