“I want to do well for myself as well!”: Constructing coaching careers in elite women’s football

There is a limited understanding of career development of sport coaches, especially from the subjective perspective focused on personal meaning and evaluation of this life project in sport. We drew on career construction theory and narrative methodology to explore football coaches’ career development, adaptability resources, and the meanings they assigned to their journeys. Ten women’s football (soccer) coaches (2 women) aged 23-60 in England took part in narrative interviews which we analysed using thematic narrative analysis. Our analysis indicated that early immersion into the football narrative context most often resulted in low career exploration and a strong commitment to coaching as an attempt to keep the footballing identity narrative ‘going’. Whilst the majority of coaches had a full-time occupation elsewhere, they self-identified as professional coaches and approached coaching with a career orientation animated by a desire to progress to a full-time coaching position. The coaches were resourceful and active career agents in crafting their careers in football; however, most of them expressed little concern or curiosity for other careers aside professional coaching, leaving them vulnerable to psychological distress if unable to realise their career ambition. The findings illustrate the seductive nature of football with the narrative context providing coaches with a cherished sense of identity but also bringing a permanent sense of insecurity and costs to their lives outside of the game

Measuring specialty indecision among career-decided students

Increasing numbers of career-decided students in professional and graduate schools have difficulty choosing a specialty. To begin to examine this problem, a measure of specialty indecision was devised by changing the Career Decision Scale items to deal with specialty indecision rather than career indecision. The scale was then administered to 567 medical students along with measures of vocational development and exploratory behavior. Initial evaluation of the psychometric properties of the Specialty Indecision Scale indicate that it is internally consistent, relates more to specialty choice than to career choice, and inversely relates to both vocational development and exploratory behavior. A factor analysis of the scale items extracted four factors that reflect cognitive, conative, criterion, and implementation restraints on the decision-making process. The Specialty Indecision Scale seems to be useful for diagnostic and research purposes in the study and treatment of specialty indecision.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/25480/1/0000020.pd

Development and Initial Validation of the Willingness to Compromise Scale

Ministry of Education, Singapore under its Academic Research Funding Tier

Tortoise or hare? Supporting the chronotype preference of employees with fluctuating chronic illness symptoms

Objective: Our aim is to understand how to facilitate the job retention of employees with chronic illness. We focus on multiple sclerosis (MS) as a criterion chronic illness. Design: An opportunity sample of 20 individuals of working age (13 female; 7 male) were recruited who had been in paid employment for over 28 months with a concurrent diagnosis of MS. Participants took part in one of three focus groups with a topic guide comprising eight keywords: work, coping, performance, support, future, expectations, and sharing symptoms. Data were analysed using dialogical analysis. Main outcome measures: As a qualitative study, no outcome measure was used. However, the specific focus of interest was to search for differential patterns of ‘timespace’ – chronotope - that people with chronic illness utilize to manage their condition in the workplace. Results: Participants oriented to two distinct chronotope types: unsustainable epic (characterized by condensed time) and temporary idyll (characterized by condensed space). Perceived managerial discretion was identified as possibly influencing participants’ chronotope preference. Conclusion: Identifying chronotope preference has practical implications for health psychologists and related professionals who provide and advise on support to facilitate people with chronic illness to thrive in the workplace

Life design and career counseling: contributions to social justice

The chapter begins with the presentation of LDC framework. In the second section, considerations are given on LDC possibilities for enhancing decent work and social justice. From this perspective of social exclusion, designated social integrationist, participation in paid work is viewed as the key to social inclusion (Watts, 2001). At the end of this section the relevance of contextual factors in career development of disadvantaged populations is referred to highlight the importance of these interventions not be exclusively focused on inter- and intrapersonal career development factors, but also take into consideration social action at the institutional, community, public policy and international/global levels (Cook, 2017). In the next section, the process of balancing the focus on the self-determination of the individual with a focus on a transformation of contextual factors that reinforce the disadvantaged position (Blustein, et al., 2005; Prilleltensky, 1997) is illustrated by presenting an intervention in which LDC was integrated into supported employment approach. Our proposal focuses exclusively on collaborative activities at the individual, institutional and communal level, with these being the tiers which the counselor can more easily influence as part of their more routine interaction with disadvantaged populations in general. The chapter concludes with an overview of the subject and a reference on LDC limitations for the intervention with disadvantaged populations in general

Testing and Assessment in an International Context: Cross- and Multi-cultural Issues

Globalisation, increase of migration flows, and the concurrent worldwide competitiveness impose rethinking of testing and assessment procedures and practices in an international and multicultural context. This chapter reviews the methodological and practical implications for psychological assessment in the field of career guidance. The methodological implications are numerous and several aspects have to be considered, such as cross-cultural equivalence or construct, method, and item bias. Moreover, the construct of culture by itself is difficult to define and difficult to measure. In order to provide non-discriminatory assessment, counsellors should develop their clinical cross-cultural competencies, develop more specific intervention strategies, and respect cultural differences. Several suggestions are given concerning translation and adaptation of psychological instruments, developing culture specific measures, and the use of these instruments. More research in this field should use mixed methods, multi-centric designs, and consider emic and etic psychological variables. A multidisciplinary approach might also allow identifying culture specific and ecological meaningful constructs. Non-discriminatory assessment implies considering the influence and interaction of personal characteristics and environmental factors

Understanding potential career changers’ experience of career confidence following a positive psychology based coaching programme

Changes in the labour market over the last decades have led to an increase in the number of career and job changes individuals are likely to face in their working lives. Previous research indicates that a high level of confidence can help individuals to make positive career changes, yet an agreed definition of confidence is not widely accepted, and the literature provides a limited evidence base for practice. This research involved five female participants who were contemplating a career change. They took part in a coaching programme which consisted of four positive psychology interventions based on a proposal of core confidence as a higher order construct composed of self-efficacy, hope, optimism and resilience. Data were gathered through semi-structured interviews and written reflections and an interpretative phenomenological analysis showed that participants perceived their career confidence before the programme as low, incorporating negative affect and self-doubt. After the programme, participants demonstrated increased career engagement, self-awareness and a positive and optimistic outlook. The analysis revealed that change was effected through the development of hope, change in cognitive processes and coaching as a catalyst. Implications for the definition of career confidence, and for positive psychology and career coaching practice are considered

Career self: a longitudinal study with college students

O self de carreira constituí um subconjunto organizado do universo cognitivo de uma pessoa, responsável pelo carácter subjetivo que a mesma confere à carreira. Este estudo pretende avaliar mudanças no conteúdo do self de carreira de estudantes universitários, do início para o final do último ano de graduação. Para tal, recorreu-se a medidas repetidas dos índices da Grelha de Repertório da Carreira (Silva & Taveira, 2005; Silva, 2008). Na investigação, participaram 80 estudantes, dos quais 49 são mulheres (61,25%) e 31 são homens (38,75%), com idades entre os 21 e os 45 anos (M= 23,9, DP= 4,31). Os resultados indicam que, no final da licenciatura, os estudantes diminuem a distância como se constrõem em relação aos outros e mantêm uma construção positiva do self de carreira.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT

A note on the pricing of multivariate contingent claims under a transformed-gamma distribution

We develop a framework for pricing multivariate European-style contingent claims in a discrete-time economy based on a multivariate transformed-gamma distribution. In our model, each transformed-gamma distributed underlying asset depends on two terms: a idiosyncratic term and a systematic term, where the latter is the same for all underlying assets and has a direct impact on their correlation structure. Given our distributional assumptions and the existence of a representative agent with a standard utility function, we apply equilibrium arguments and provide sufficient conditions for obtaining preference-free contingent claim pricing equations. We illustrate the applicability of our framework by providing examples of preference-free contingent claim pricing models. Multivariate pricing models are of particular interest when payoffs depend on two or more underlying assets, such as crack and crush spread options, options to exchange one asset for another, and options with a stochastic strike price in general