1. Abstract
The Accommodation and Assimilation Scale—Italian Version (adapted as the Scala di Assimilazione e Accomodamento within career research by Rita Chiesa and Audrey Ansay Antonio, 2024) is a psychometrically validated self-report instrument designed to assess self-regulatory career resources among emerging adults and university students in Italy. Originating from the theoretical framework of dual-process coping and developmental adaptation formulated by Jochen Brandtstädter and operationalized within vocational psychology by Haratsis and colleagues (2015), the scale measures how individuals navigate developmental hurdles, vocational obstacles, and career transitions through dual coping modes: assimilative persistence and accommodative flexibility. The instrument evaluates two central dimensions: Resources for Assimilation, characterized by active tenacity in modifying external circumstances, investing time and effort, and proactively pursuing personal vocational aspirations; and Resources for Accommodation, marked by cognitive reframing, flexible goal adjustment, acceptance of situational boundaries, and reorientation of aspirations when encountering insurmountable barriers.
Initially translated from the 20-item English measure using rigorous forward and back-translation procedures, empirical evaluation demonstrated that a refined 17-item model yields superior psychometric properties in Italian university cohorts. Items are rated along a 6-point Likert response scale ranging from 1 (“completely disagree”) to 6 (“completely agree”). Psychometric evaluations confirm strong internal consistency reliability, with Cronbach’s alpha coefficients exceeding .80 for both subscales, alongside one-month test-retest reliability estimates of .69 for Assimilation and .62 for Accommodation. Construct validity was corroborated via exploratory factor analysis (accounting for 54.64% of total variance) and confirmatory factor analysis (χ²/df = 2.09, CFI = .91, TLI = .90, RMSEA = .081). Convergent and criterion validity were verified through expected negative correlations between assimilation and accommodation, as well as robust positive correlations with career adaptability. The Italian version provides a robust diagnostic and evaluative tool for higher education counseling services, organizational transitions, and vocational research.
2. Keywords
Assimilation, Accommodation, Italian Version, Career Resources, Career Adaptability, Dual-Process Model, Psychometrics, Vocational Psychology, University Students, Goal Adjustment
3. Authors
The Italian adaptation and psychometric validation of the Accommodation and Assimilation Scale was conducted by:
- Rita Chiesa, Ph.D. — Associate Professor of Work and Organizational Psychology, Department of Psychology «Renzo Canestrari», Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna, Bologna, Italy. Email: [email protected].
- Audrey Ansay Antonio, Ph.D. — Researcher and Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Psychology «Renzo Canestrari», Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna, Bologna, Italy.
The foundational English instrument upon which this Italian adaptation is based was originally developed by Jim M. Haratsis, Peter A. Creed, and Michelle Hood (2015) at the School of Applied Psychology and Menzies Health Institute Queensland, Griffith University, Australia.
4. Purpose
The contemporary transition from tertiary education to the competitive labor market presents emerging adults with systemic precariousness, occupational instability, and psychological ambiguity. The primary purpose of the Accommodation and Assimilation Scale—Italian Version is to capture, operationalize, and quantify the personal regulatory resources that university students deploy when formulating, pursuing, and restructuring their career trajectories. Specifically, the scale assesses the dynamic equilibrium between intentional persistence (assimilative activities directed toward conforming external realities to one’s personal goals) and psychological flexibility (accommodative processes directed toward adjusting personal standards, goals, and appraisals in response to unyielding structural limitations).
From a clinical and counseling psychology perspective, university counseling practitioners frequently encounter students experiencing career distress, paralysis, academic burnout, and severe career indecision. These psychological struggles often stem from dysfunctional self-regulation, such as maladaptive obstinacy (hyper-assimilation without accommodation, leading to exhaustion and chronic failure) or premature resignation (hyper-accommodation without assimilation, resulting in learned helplessness and abandonment of central vocational aspirations). Administering this tool enables career counselors and university guidance services to identify asymmetrical coping profiles. Counselors can design targeted cognitive-behavioral interventions that cultivate proactive job-seeking agency (assimilative capacity) while concurrently building psychological acceptance, cognitive reframing, and alternative goal identification (accommodative capacity).
From a research perspective, the scale equips investigators in work, organizational, and vocational psychology with a validated psychometric instrument specifically adapted for the Italian socio-economic context. Prior to this adaptation, Italian career literature largely evaluated self-regulation using generalized scales of coping or unidimensional measures of career adaptability. By capturing assimilation and accommodation as distinct, co-occurring coping faculties, the Italian version allows researchers to explore how emerging adults navigate the high youth unemployment and credential inflation that characterize Southern European labor markets. The scale serves as a predictive instrument for student career engagement, academic retention, post-graduation employment success, subjective career success, and psychological well-being.
5. Psychological Construct
The psychological construct evaluated by the instrument is rooted in the dual-process framework of developmental self-regulation across the lifespan, specifically adapted to career behavior. It asserts that career development is characterized by continuous attempts to maintain congruence between subjective vocational aspirations and objective socio-environmental constraints. This self-regulatory system is operationalized via two distinct yet complementary dimensions:
Resources for Assimilation
Assimilation represents the intentional, action-oriented, proactive mode of self-regulation. In this mode, individuals strive to actively alter their external environment, enhance their competencies, modify situational parameters, and overcome obstacles to ensure that external realities match their internal self-concept and career objectives. Within the context of higher education and early career planning, assimilation involves tenacious goal pursuit, high problem-focused coping, strategic skill acquisition, and sustained behavioral effort despite immediate setbacks.
Individuals with high assimilative resources do not passively yield when faced with competitive hurdles, failed examinations, or rejected job applications; instead, they escalate effort, mobilize social support networks, seek out supplemental training, revise their strategic resumes, and redouble their job search activities. Assimilation embodies personal agency, active mastery, and self-efficacy. However, if unmoderated by accommodation, extreme assimilation can manifest as behavioral entrapment and prolonged rumination over unattainable aspirations.
Resources for Accommodation
Accommodation represents the reflective, flexible, cognitive mode of self-regulation. When situational circumstances cannot be altered through assimilative effort—due to systemic economic crises, geographic restrictions, or fixed personal limitations—accommodative mechanisms become psychologically necessary. Accommodation involves the voluntary readjustment, downgrading, or substitution of original aspirations, alongside cognitive reframing, lowering of subjective standards of success, and disengagement from barren goals to prevent severe demoralization.
Within university career preparation, accommodative resources allow students to accept unexpected constraints gracefully, re-evaluate their values, construct alternative career paths, and find subjective meaning in lateral professional choices. Accommodation prevents depressive withdrawal by redirecting motivational energy toward viable, attainable pursuits. Far from being a passive surrender, accommodation represents an active intrapsychic adaptation that preserves psychological resilience, self-worth, and mental health in the face of insurmountable vocational barriers.
6. Theoretical Framework
The theoretical architecture of the Accommodation and Assimilation Scale is rooted in developmental action theory and life-span psychology, predominantly formulated by Jochen Brandtstädter and colleagues (e.g., Brandtstädter & Renner, 1990; Brandtstädter & Greve, 1994). Brandtstädter postulated that human development across adulthood is an active, self-directed process maintained through a homeostatic balance between two distinct yet functional control modes:
- The Assimilative Mode (Tenacious Goal Pursuit): Characterized by intentional efforts to bridge discrepancies between actual situations and personal desires by modifying external reality or enhancing individual performance capabilities.
- The Accommodative Mode (Flexible Goal Adjustment): Characterized by non-intentional or cognitive adjustments of goals, standards, and values to align internal aspirations with immutable external constraints.
Historically derived from Jean Piaget‘s cognitive developmental theory—which posited assimilation and accommodation as biological invariants of cognitive adaptation—Brandtstädter transferred these concepts into the domain of action theory, subjective well-being, and coping across developmental deadlines and functional declines.
In the domain of vocational psychology, Haratsis, Creed, and Hood (2015) recognized that traditional models of career adaptation frequently overemphasized assimilative mastery (e.g., career planning, proactive personality, exploratory behavior) while neglecting the profound psychological necessity of accommodative flexibility. During the school-to-work or university-to-work transition, individuals repeatedly encounter systemic barriers (such as limited industry entry-level positions, geographical immobility, or financial pressures) that cannot be mastered through sheer assimilative effort alone. Haratsis and colleagues established that young adults must draw upon both assimilative resources (to actively pursue training and employment) and accommodative resources (to realign expectations and maintain life satisfaction when confronted with initial labor market friction).
Chiesa and Antonio (2024) contextualized this dual-process model within Italy’s specific socio-economic fabric. In Italian higher education, graduates navigate systemic complexities, such as prolonged educational pathways, high regional labor market disparities, and heightened risks of qualification mismatch. By contextualizing Brandtstädter’s dual-process architecture and Haratsis et al.’s vocational operationalization, the Italian adaptation provides a culturally calibrated assessment tool designed to map how Italian students modulate assimilative striving and accommodative restructuring to sustain vocational adaptability and subjective career success.
7. Validity
The psychometric validity of the Accommodation and Assimilation Scale—Italian Version was rigorously established through construct, convergent, and discriminant validation methodologies conducted with Italian university student cohorts (Chiesa & Antonio, 2024).
Construct and Factorial Validity
Construct validity was initially examined using Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA), which extracted two primary orthogonal-to-oblique latent dimensions reflecting Resources for Assimilation and Resources for Accommodation. The two extracted factors accounted for 54.64% of the total cumulative variance in the item set, demonstrating that the dual-process structure accounted for the underlying correlation matrix. Item retention criteria established during psychometric evaluation reduced the translated 20-item inventory to a refined 17-item structure that eliminated low-loading and cross-loading items, resulting in a cleaner factor structure.
Convergent and Discriminant Validity
Theoretical expectations dictate that while assimilation and accommodation are distinct self-regulatory pathways, they function interactively within vocational decision-making. In line with the theoretical foundations of the dual-process model, correlation analyses revealed that assimilation and accommodation were negatively correlated with each other. This confirms that these dimensions represent distinct self-regulatory orientations rather than redundant manifestations of a single general coping construct.
Furthermore, convergent validity was established by evaluating the relationship between the scale and the Career Adapt-Abilities Scale (CAAS; Savickas & Porfeli, 2012; Italian adaptation). As hypothesized by Chiesa and Antonio (2024), Assimilation resources demonstrated significant positive correlations with career adaptability dimensions, specifically Career Concern, Career Control, Career Curiosity, and Career Confidence. Students possessing robust assimilative resources reported higher self-efficacy, deliberate career planning, and proactive career exploratory behaviors. Concurrently, accommodation demonstrated expected functional correlations with coping flexibility and psychological adjustment, confirming the theoretical validity of measuring both persistent and flexible resources within academic populations.
8. Reliability
The Italian adaptation demonstrated satisfactory internal consistency and temporal stability across university student samples:
Internal Consistency
Internal consistency was assessed using Cronbach’s alpha (α) for both extracted dimensions. The reliability coefficients exceeded standard psychometric thresholds (α ≥ .80), indicating high homogeneity among the retained items within each respective subscale:
- Resources for Assimilation: Cronbach’s α > .80
- Resources for Accommodation: Cronbach’s α > .80
These values demonstrate that the Italian translation preserved the internal coherence and measurement precision of the original English subscales developed by Haratsis et al. (2015).
Test-Retest Reliability (Temporal Stability)
Temporal stability was evaluated across a one-month longitudinal interval with a designated subgroup of university respondents. Pearson correlation coefficients between baseline and follow-up administrations yielded:
- Assimilation Subscale: r = .69 (p < .001)
- Accommodation Subscale: r = .62 (p < .001)
These test-retest coefficients confirm adequate temporal stability, reflecting that career assimilation and accommodation operate as stable self-regulatory capacities while maintaining the sensitivity necessary to capture developmental shifts and therapeutic interventions over time.
9. Factor Analysis
The structural dimensionality of the Italian adaptation was verified through a combined Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) sequence (Chiesa & Antonio, 2024).
Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)
An exploratory factor analysis using principal axis factoring with oblimin rotation was conducted on the initial 20 translated items. The scree test, parallel analysis, and eigenvalue examination indicated a clear two-factor solution. The two extracted factors accounted for 54.64% of the total variance:
- Factor 1 (Assimilation): Gathered items evaluating active persistence, intentional striving, goal dedication, and direct intervention into career barriers.
- Factor 2 (Accommodation): Gathered items evaluating flexible aspiration adjustments, cognitive reappraisal, acceptance of unalterable constraints, and disengagement from blocked goals.
During the EFA evaluation, 3 items exhibiting factor loadings below .40 or elevated cross-loadings across both dimensions were identified and removed, yielding a parsimonious 17-item scale.
Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)
A Confirmatory Factor Analysis using maximum likelihood estimation was executed on an independent sample of Italian university students to confirm the replicated two-factor measurement model. The structural goodness-of-fit indices demonstrated acceptable fit to the empirical data:
- Chi-Square to Degrees of Freedom Ratio (χ²/df): 2.09 (values ≤ 3.0 denote good structural fit)
- Comparative Fit Index (CFI): .91 (values ≥ .90 reflect acceptable model fit)
- Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): .90 (values ≥ .90 indicate adequate fit)
- Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): .081 (90% Confidence Interval: [.067, .095], p < .001)
The CFA results verified that the two-dimensional model of assimilation and accommodation represents the psychological structure of career self-regulation in Italian university students.
10. Instrument / Measurement Tool
- Instrument Name: Accommodation and Assimilation Scale—Italian Version (Scala di Assimilazione e Accomodamento)
- Authors of Adaptation: Rita Chiesa & Audrey Ansay Antonio (2024)
- Original Authors: Jim M. Haratsis, Peter A. Creed, & Michelle Hood (2015)
- Construct Assessed: Dual-process self-regulatory career resources (Assimilative tenacity and Accommodative flexibility)
- Test Type: Self-report psychological questionnaire / inventory
- Target Population: Emerging adults, university students, and adult job-seekers (Ages 18+)
- Item Count: 17 items (refined from the original 20-item translated pool)
- Subscales / Dimensions:
- Resources for Assimilation: Assesses active mastery, goal-directed tenacity, and external problem-solving.
- Resources for Accommodation: Assesses cognitive reframing, standard adjustment, and adaptive disengagement.
- Response Format: 6-point Likert-type scale:
- 1 = Completely Disagree (Completamente in disaccordo)
- 2 = Disagree (In disaccordo)
- 3 = Somewhat Disagree (Abbastanza in disaccordo)
- 4 = Somewhat Agree (Abbastanza d’accordo)
- 5 = Agree (D’accordo)
- 6 = Completely Agree (Completamente d’accordo)
- Administration Method: Electronic (online survey platforms) or paper-and-pencil; self-administered.
- Estimated Completion Time: Approximately 5 to 8 minutes.
- Scoring Procedure: Subscale scores are calculated by averaging or summing the corresponding item responses for each factor. Higher scores on the Assimilation subscale reflect greater proactive problem-solving, whereas higher scores on the Accommodation subscale reflect greater cognitive flexibility and goal adjustment capacity.
11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year
Test Year: 2024 (Original English scale published in 2015).
Licensing and Accessibility: The Accommodation and Assimilation Scale—Italian Version was published in an academic peer-reviewed journal (Counseling: Giornale Italiano di Ricerca e Applicazioni). The measure is intended for non-commercial academic, research, and institutional career guidance purposes. The complete Italian item formulations, specific item-level factor loadings, and administrative scoring keys are subject to standard scholarly copyright protocols. Researchers and practitioners wishing to administer the Italian version in scientific investigations or student counseling initiatives should contact the corresponding author, Prof. Rita Chiesa (Department of Psychology «Renzo Canestrari», Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna, Email: [email protected]), to request formal permission and obtain the authorized Italian questionnaire protocol.
12. References
- Brandtstädter, J., & Greve, W. (1994). The aging self: Stabilizing and protective processes. Developmental Review, 14(1), 52–80. https://doi.org/10.1006/drev.1994.1003
- Brandtstädter, J., & Renner, G. (1990). Tenacious goal pursuit and flexible goal adjustment: Explication and age-related analysis of assimilative and accommodative strategies of coping. Psychology and Aging, 5(1), 58–67. https://doi.org/10.1037/0882-7974.5.1.58
- Chiesa, R., & Antonio, A. A. (2024). Instruments for assessing the career resources of university students: Psychometric properties of the Italian version of the Assimilation and Accommodation Scale and the Italian version of the Career Adaptability Scale. Counseling: Giornale Italiano di Ricerca e Applicazioni, 17(1), 63–75. https://doi.org/10.14605/CS1712405
- Haratsis, J. M., Creed, P. A., & Hood, M. (2015). Measuring career resources: Development and initial validation of the Assimilation and Accommodation Scale. Journal of Career Assessment, 23(4), 577–592. https://doi.org/10.1177/1069072714553554
- Savickas, M. L., & Porfeli, E. J. (2012). Career Adapt-Abilities Scale: Construction, reliability, and measurement equivalence across 13 countries. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 80(3), 661–673. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2012.01.011