College as a Growth Opportunity: Assessing Personal Growth Initiative and Self-determination Theory
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College as a Growth Opportunity: Assessing Personal Growth Initiative and Self‑determination Theory Ingrid K. Weigold1 · Arne Weigold2 · Shu Ling1 · Migyeong Jang1 Accepted: 11 September 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Although college presents a time for personal and vocational development, little research has examined individuals’ intentional use of college as a growth opportunity. Consequently, the current study assessed relationships among personal growth initiative (an individual’s active desire to grow in personally relevant domains), basic needs satisfaction at college, and positive outcomes in samples of students from a large, public, predominantly White institution (n = 818) and a small, private, minority-majority college (n = 195). Using structural equation modeling, we examined a hypothesized model in which personal growth initiative was indirectly related to the two outcomes (psychological well-being and vocational commitment) through the satisfaction of the basic needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness; this was compared to a reverse model. The hypothesized model was a better fit for the data in the university sample, and both models had similar fit for the college sample. Tests of indirect effects using the hypothesized model showed evidence of mediation, with similarities and differences between the samples. Finally, the two models were invariant across institutions at the structural level. PGI and basic needs satisfaction explained over half of the variance in psychological well-being and approximately one-quarter of the variance in vocational commitment in both samples. Keywords Personal growth initiative · Self-determination theory · College students · Wellbeing · Vocational commitment
1 Introduction The college experience is inherently an opportunity for personal growth (Arnett 2016). Both traditional and non-traditional students face new challenges related to their vocation (e.g., selecting a potential career path, refining existing skills) and mental health (e.g., stress, substance use; see Robitschek and Thoen 2015). Successfully resolving these challenges relates to positive growth, such as career decision self-efficacy (Grier-Reed et al. 2012) and psychological well-being (Antaramian 2015). * Ingrid K. Weigold [email protected] 1
The University of Akron, Akron, OH, USA
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Kent State University at Geauga, Burton, OH, USA
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Although many students successfully navigate the challenges of college, others struggle. For example, stress from handling multiple challenges and roles impacts both traditional- and non-traditional-aged college students (Pedrelli et al. 2015), and emotional and behavioral problems among college students have increased in recent years (Brunner et al. 2014). Additionally, traditional-aged students are at the stage of life often accompanied by heightened loneliness (Qualter et al. 2015). Finally, approximately one in five college students falls into the vocational identity category of diffused, eviden
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