José Silva

Características psicométricas da versão Portuguesa da Career Decision Self-Efficacy Scale–Short Form (CDSE–SF)

In this article the authors make a synthesis of the main results obtained with the adaptation of the Career Decision Self-Efficacy Scale – Short Form (CDSE-SF: Taylor & Betz, 1983) in Portuguese samples. After giving a brief presentation of the instrument (theoretical basis, dimensions and metric properties in international samples), the authors succinctly point out the main evidences already produced concerning its precision/reliability and its validity, in Portuguese student samples attending different school grades. Then, using a non probabilistic sample of 123 9th grade students the authors also analyse the structural validity of the responses obtained to the CDSE-SF 25 items. Finally, some of the needs for future research with this scale are discussed.

Perspectives on Guidance and Counselling as Strategic Tools to Improve Lifelong Learning in Portugal

This chapter presents a critical reflection about guidance and counselling structures and services in Portugal as a central dimension for the implementation of the European Area of Lifelong Learning. Counselling in Portugal constitutes simultaneously an emergent and an already established field of intervention, both with adolescents as well as with adults. In fact, as an educational and psychological practice, it has contributed to create well-accepted models and practices, encompassing information interventions, psycho-pedagogical interventions and career guidance and life-designing counselling. Nevertheless, the emphasis on the lifelong learning and guidance paradigm highlights the importance to attempt to integrate different services which are already in place into a coordinated structure that takes into account both the normative and nonnormative transitions, voluntary or otherwise, that the citizens face throughout their entire lifespan. Service users must be empowered to act upon an ever-changing world by developing critical career management skills, although service providers must be very attentive to the diversity of career challenges across the lifespan, when factors like age, gender, health and position in the workforce are taken into consideration. The Commission of the European Communities underlines the fact that the main mission of guidance and counselling interventions is to help reframe the relations between education, school and the larger society, by targeting specific groups (e.g. unemployed adults, working adults and older adults); facilitating access to guidance and counselling services to potential clients, in general, and to underprivileged groups, in special; and promoting the quality of these services.

Interesses e competências percebidas em crianças do ensino básico

Apesar de a infância ser considerada como a base do desenvolvimento vocacional, poucos sao os estudos desenvolvidos nesta faixa etaria acerca das variaveis implicadas e qual o papel que desempenham neste processo. Pretendendo colmatar algumas dessas lacunas procuramos explorar algumas caracteristicas estruturais e correlacionais dos interesses e competencias percebidas de criancas do ensino basico (3o, 6o e 9o anos de escolaridade), recorrendo, para o efeito, a traducao e adaptacao portuguesa do ICA-R de Tracey e Ward, que tem em consideracao os seis tipos de personalidade enunciados por Holland (R-I-A-S-E-C).

SRLG failure-disjoint path pair of min-sum cost in GMPLS networks

Network reliability can be implemented in several network layers. The concept of Shared Risk Link Group (SRLG) allows an upper layer to be capable of implementing SRLG diverse routing. If a given link is known to be protected, it can be omitted from the set of links to be avoided, when a SRLG disjoint protection path (or segment) for a given active path is calculated. An Integer Linear Programming Formulation for SRLG failure-disjoint path pair of min-sum problem, considering dedicated protection, is presented. Two heuristics for solving the min-sum SRLG failure-disjoint path problem, which are based on two already known algorithms for SRLG diverse routing are proposed and the resulting network performance in a reference network is presented. The envisaged application scenario of these routing algorithms is GMPLS networks with protected links.

Emerging Adults Thinking About Their Future: Development of the Portuguese Version of the Hopes and Fears Questionnaire

Nowadays, emerging adults live in a context of macroeconomic uncertainty. As the major processes of one’s identity exploration currently occur in emerging adulthood, understanding how these individuals foresee their future is of special interest. The purpose of this study was 2-fold: (i) to investigate future orientation (FO) in a sample of Portuguese emerging adults and (ii) to validate the Portuguese version of the Hopes and Fears Questionnaire. Data from 332 individuals were analyzed. Results demonstrated that participants’ future hopes and fears were mainly pertaining to education, work/career, and family/marriage. Participants also reported concerns related to their financial resources. Thus, the results showed that participants’ FO reflected major tasks associated with their development stage, as well as contextual factors, such as macroeconomic trends. This study contributed to the knowledge of emerging adulthood in Portugal, simultaneously providing a useful and reliable measure to evaluate emerging adults’ FO in that country.

Critical Feature Selection and Critical Sampling for Data Mining

The rapidly growing big data generated by connected sensors, devices, the web and social network platforms, etc., have stimulated the advancement of data science, which holds tremendous potential for problem solving in various domains. How to properly utilize the data in model building to obtain accurate analytics and knowledge discovery is a topic of great importance in data mining, and wherefore two issues arise: how to select a critical subset of features and how to select a critical subset of data points for sampling. This paper presents ongoing research that suggests: 1. the critical feature dimension problem is theoretically intractable, but simple heuristic methods may well be sufficient for practical purposes; 2. there are big data analytic problems where evidence suggest that the success of data mining depends more on the critical feature dimension than the specific features selected, thus a random selection of the features based on the dataset’s critical feature dimension will prove sufficient; and 3. The problem of critical sampling has the same intractable complexity as critical feature dimension, but again simple heuristic methods may well be practicable in most applications; experimental results with several versions of the heuristic method are presented and discussed. Finally, a set of metrics for data quality is proposed based on the concepts of critical features and critical sampling.

The only children’s transition to adulthood: brief research report in their academic and professional achievement

The main goal of this paper is to analyze the academic and work achievement of the only children in their early adulthood. Data were taken from an ongoing longitudinal study that followed a large sample of participants from elementary public schools until their late twenties. Regarding academic attainment it was found that, as young adults, the only children had achieved more school grades than their peers; but when participants were distributed in two subsamples the differences between the only children and children with siblings disappeared in the last subsample. Regarding professional achievement, it was found that only children started to work later and took fewer jobs than their peers. No other differences were found between the two groups in the remaining variables of academic and professional achievement in early adulthood. Possible implications of these findings for education of the only child at school or in the family are discussed.

The Role of Self-Control in Academic Performance in the Transition from Adolescence to Adulthood

A relacao entre autocontrolo e desempenho academico ainda esta insuficientemente estudada, particularmente, o papel desempenhado pelas diferentes componentes do autocontrolo nesse processo. A analise desta ultima questao constitui o principal objetivo do presente trabalho. Utilizou-se uma amostra de 448 participantes que foram seguidos desde o ensino basico ate ao fim da terceira decada de vida. Muitas das informacoes foram fornecidas pelos participantes numa entrevista individual; outras informacoes foram recolhidas junto dos professores do ensino basico. Os resultados mostraram um efeito moderado de algumas componentes do autocontrolo (v.g., preferencia por atividades fisicas, tomada de risco e a preferencia por tarefas simples) nas medidas de desempenho academico, mesmo apos se ter controlado estatisticamente o efeito das variaveis concorrentes. Seria interessante examinar, em trabalhos futuros, a generalizacao dos resultados a outros aspetos do desempenho academico e comprovar a robustez preditiva das dimensoes do autocontrolo e a sua utilidade na promocao do sucesso escolar.Although there is a considerable amount of evidence that self‐control has an important impact on academic achievement, little is known about the role played by its different components in that process. This issue is the main goal of the present work. The data come from a longitudinal study in which several hundred participants were followed up from primary school until their late twenties. Self‐report measures were used to assess self‐control in adolescence and educational attainment in adulthood, whereas information regarding sociodemographic variables and possible learning difficulties were collected from teachers in elementary school. Results revealed a modest but significant effect of self‐control in all measures of academic achievement, even when the confounding variables were statistically controlled for. However, only some components of that construct had a consistent impact in academic achieve‐ ment: preference for simple tasks, preference for physical activities and, to a lesser extent, impulsivity. It would be interesting to assess in future studies if similar effects are found when other criteria are used to define academic achievement, and whether those three dimensions of low self‐control provide a secure basis to develop new intervention strategies aimed at improving young adults’ educational level.

Career Adaptability, Employability, and Career Resilience in Managing Transitions

School-to-work transitions, in the sense of being processes that take place over a period of time and which involve both personal meaning and social issues (e.g. contextual factors), are what mark the starting point of this chapter. This chapter is essentially divided into three blocks, although the three follow the same structure. The first block is shaped around career adaptability, offering an overview of the concept and its historical perspective. The second block deals with employability. The most common definitions of this construct are first presented, along with a brief historical contextualisation of its role in career studies, followed by a selective review of existing research into employability. The third and final block looks at resilience. By looking at the notion of a career as an action, rather than a structure, we characterise the concept of career resilience as pertaining to the overarching framework designed to understand the process of self-directed career management, particularly when viewed as one of the components of the multidimensional concept of career motivation. Conclusions draw this chapter to a close, summarising the most useful and important suggestions which have been presented.

Aging and health: Self-efficacy for Self-direction in Health Scale

ABSTRACT OBJECTIVE To validate the Escala de Autoeficácia para a Autodireção na Saúde (EAAS – Self-efficacy for Self-direction in Health Scale). METHODS Non-experimental quantitative study of EAAS validation, by confirmatory factorial analyses, evaluating a sample of 508 older adults from the north and the center of Portugal with mean age of 71.67 (from 51 to 96 years), to whom the Self-efficacy for Self-direction in Health Scale, the Rosenberg Self-esteem Scale, the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule, the Satisfaction with Life Scale, and the Instrumental Activities of Daily Living Scale were applied. The EAAS was developed from the theoretical constructs of self-efficacy and from self-directed learning within the PALADIN European project framework, aiming to develop an instrument able to assess the extent to which older adults take good care of their health. RESULTS The internal consistency was 0.87 (Cronbach’s alpha) and confirmatory factorial analyses enabled to find a model near the one theoretically proposed, indicating a structure consisting of four dimensions: physical exercise, healthy diet, engaging in health-related learning, and visits to health professionals. From the psychometric point of view, the model in four factors showed quite satisfactory fit indicators. CONCLUSIONS The Self-efficacy for Self-direction in Health Scale, with 16 items, is adequate to evaluate to what extent older adults have confidence in their ability to take care of their own health, with high degree of autonomy.