Accommodation and Assimilation Scale – Italian Version

Abstract

The Accommodation and Assimilation Scale—Italian Version (AAS-IV), known in Italian as the Scala di Assimilazione e Accomodamento e di Adattabilità di Carriera, is a 2024 adaptation developed by Chiesa and Antonio. This instrument is based on the original measure created by Haratsis and colleagues (2015).

The scale is designed to measure two distinct sets of career resources, utilizing 17 items in total, though the original adaptation was intended to include 20 items. It includes items assessing assimilation resources, which involve modifying the external environment to match personal goals, and items assessing accommodation resources, which focus on adjusting personal objectives to better fit existing circumstances. The translation process into Italian utilized the rigorous back-translation method to ensure conceptual equivalence. The subsequent validation study provided detailed psychometric data regarding its factor structure, internal reliability, and construct validity within the Italian university student population.

Keywords

Assimilation, Accommodation, Italian Version, Career Resources, University Students, Psychometric Properties, Cronbach’s alpha, Factor Analysis.

Authors

Chiesa, Rita, Antonio, Audrey Ansay.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Accommodation and Assimilation Scale—Italian Version is to accurately assess the level of career resources available to and utilized by Italian university students.

By distinguishing between the two primary factors—Resources for Assimilation and Resources for Accommodation—the scale offers nuanced insights into how students manage the complexities and demands of their career development process during their academic tenure, allowing researchers and counselors to identify specific adaptive strategies.

Construct

The scale measures the psychological construct of Assimilation and Accommodation, specifically applied within the context of career development and adaptation.

Assimilation resources refer to proactive efforts aimed at changing one’s environment to align with personal aspirations, such as actively seeking opportunities or overcoming obstacles. Conversely, accommodation resources involve adaptive adjustments of one’s goals or expectations in response to environmental limitations or opportunities, reflecting flexibility and realism. These concepts are central to understanding adaptive coping mechanisms in career management.

Validity

Construct validity was examined through correlations with related psychological measures, particularly the Italian version of the Career Adaptability Scale. The results indicated expected relationships between the measured factors.

Specifically, Assimilation demonstrated a negative correlation with Accommodation, suggesting they represent distinct, though interdependent, coping strategies. Crucially, Assimilation was found to be positively correlated with measures of career adaptability, confirming its theoretical role as a beneficial, proactive career management resource.

Reliability

The scale exhibits strong internal consistency for both subscales. Internal reliability, measured using Cronbach’s alpha, was reported as greater than 0.8 for both the Assimilation and Accommodation factors, indicating high homogeneity among items within each subscale.

Test-retest reliability was assessed over a one-month interval to evaluate temporal stability. The resulting coefficients were moderate but acceptable for a psychological measure administered to a student population, registering .69 for the Assimilation factor and .62 for the Accommodation factor.

Factor Analysis

The dimensional structure of the AAS-IV was rigorously tested using both Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) to confirm its hypothesized two-factor structure.

The EFA successfully identified a clear two-factor solution, consistent with the theoretical model (Resources for Assimilation and Resources for Accommodation), which accounted for 54.64% of the total variance observed. The subsequent CFA confirmed the suitability of the two-factor model, demonstrating a good model fit based on several key indices: χ²/df = 2.09; CFI = .91; TLI = .90; and RMSEA = .081 (with a 95% Confidence Interval ranging from .067 to .095). The statistical significance (p < .001) supported the fit of the measurement model to the observed data.

Instrument

Test Type: Adapted Version; Inventory/Questionnaire

Format: A 6-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 (completely disagree) to 6 (completely agree). The administration method is Electronic.

Language Available: Italian (Adapted from English original).

Population Group: Human; Male; Female.

Age Group: Adulthood (18+ years).

Population Details: The validation sample consisted of University students in Italy.

Test Methodology: Test Validity; Test Reliability; Internal Consistency; Test-Retest Reliability; Factor Analysis; Confirmatory Factor Analysis; Exploratory Factor Analysis.

Keywords

Assimilation, Accommodation, Career Resources, Italian Version, Likert scale, Psychometrics, Higher Education.

Authors

Author ORCID Identifier: Not provided in source content.

Affiliation Email addresses: [email protected] (Rita Chiesa)

Correspondence Address: Università di Bologna, Dipartimento di Psicologia «Renzo Canestrari», Bologna, Italy.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

Test Year: 2024

Permissions and Fees: Information regarding specific permissions and associated usage fees is not detailed in the source reference.

Affiliation: Rita Chiesa and Audrey Ansay Antonio are affiliated with the Università di Bologna, Dipartimento di Psicologia «Renzo Canestrari».

Files: No file available for download was specified in the source content.

Reference’s

• 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.

Items of the Accommodation and Assimilation Scale–Italian Version

IMPORTANT: The following scale items must be preserved in their original language and must not be changed in any way.

The specific text of the 17 items comprising the Accommodation and Assimilation Scale—Italian Version was not provided in the source documentation.