This dissertation comprises three chapters. The first two address issues within the education system, focusing on strategies to attract and retain high-quality teachers in the public sector. The third chapter, a collaborative effort with Martin Martinez and Miguel Saldarriaga, explores the application of machine learning tools for nowcasting…

Over the past two decades, the skills needed to be successful in the workplace have expanded beyond technical skills to include 21st-century soft skills such as critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity. A structural equation model of the ATC21S[superscript TM] was used to investigate the relationship between 21st-century…

Over the past few decades, we have witnessed a surge in publicly funded pre-K programs in the United States. Today, policy makers in 45 states and the District of Columbia have adopted them. Combining information from twelve datasets, we use event history analysis (EHA) to examine the influence of a set of predictors on states' decisions to adopt…

This paper presents one of the first cross-nationally comparative studies on the economic and social returns to grit (perseverance and passion for long-term goals). Specifically, we investigated whether grit incrementally predicted objective (income) and subjective (job satisfaction) career success over and above cognitive skills and educational…

One-on-one career counseling has been established as the most effective type of career intervention. Prior research results have suggested that process quality determines counseling success. In this multilevel study, career counseling process quality is validated as a predictor of job seekers' reemployment at three Swiss job centers. Supervisors'…

The number of young people who are not in education, employment or training (NEET) is a key indicator on the state of youth labour markets and opportunities for young people more generally. However, it is a diverse group as people can be NEET for many reasons, and so understanding the importance of these reasons is crucial for targeting policy…

When looking at career interventions, one-on-one career counseling is one of the most effective and firmly established types of intervention. Furthermore, career counseling process quality has been validated as a predictor of job seekers' reemployment. To elucidate the underlying components of a high-quality counseling process, the effects of…

This exploratory study examined race/ethnicity, income, and employment status (including underemployment specifically) as predictors of relational distress for members of a couple in a predominantly low-income, historically marginalized racial-ethnic (HMRE) background sample (N = 671 couples). Results of a dyadic multiple regression using…

This study used the Survey of Earned Doctorates, World Bank economic data of the doctoral students' home country, and hierarchical linear modeling analysis to examine the effects of financial factors and home-country macroeconomic indicators on international doctoral students' labor market destinations. We found that wealth disparities and…

Employed cancer survivors commonly experience stigmatization, work-related changes that create barriers to maintaining or returning to work, and high unemployment. Vocational rehabilitation (VR) services can be an important resource in job retention among cancer survivors, however the specific VR needs and most effective services for this…

Most studies on the effects of tracks during secondary education focus on specific short-term academic performance indicators. This study compared the effects of tracks on long-term unemployment from 1995 to 2015, using a Flemish longitudinal cohort study (4,333 students in 54 schools). Tracks in Flanders have a hierarchy in mean academic ability.…

Not only graduation rates are important, the quality of the education received also matters for the educational prospects of young people and successful entry into the labour market. The shares of neither employed nor in education or training (NEET) are negatively related to the skill levels among young people (OECD, 2017a). The main objective of…

The current study sought to examine the demographic, psychosocial, and cultural predictors of psychological entitlement (PE) and academic entitlement (AE) and their impacts on psychological well-being in a sample of Asian and Caucasian young adults in Canada. This study found that on average, less than 80% of the participants endorsed items…

Direct support professionals (DSPs) provide a broad range of supports in a variety of settings to people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) that enables people to live, work, and participate in their communities. Despite the crucial importance in ensuring supports for community participation of people with IDD, high rates of…

While MOOCs are recognized nowadays as a potential format for professional development and lifelong learning, little research has been conducted on the factors that influence MOOC participation of professionals and unemployed in MOOCs. Based on a framework developed earlier, we conducted a study, which focused on the influence of background…