TPC-Journal-V2-Issue1

The Professional Counselor \Volume 2, Issue 1 73 Posttraumatic researchers have typically reported descriptive statistics for the total PTGI score and for the original five subscales. We report our results this way in Table 1, but also include recalculations on a per-item average basis (total score and subscale scores divided by number of corresponding items). The per-item format allows for comparisons of scores for subscales of unequal length. The reader can verify by inspection of Table 1 that all of our subscale scores round to 3.50 (to nearest .5 scale units) except the score for Spiritual Change, which rounds to 1.50. We have observed a similar pattern among the results of our previous studies (Anderson & Lopez-Baez, 2008, 2011). During preparation of this manuscript, we conducted an informal visual comparison (not based on comparative statistics) of intra-sample per-item subscale scores listed in the results of posttraumatic studies cited by Linley and Joseph (2004) and observed that most subscale scores in each sample were of almost equal magnitude. Most of the few exceptions were low subscale scores (greater than 1.00 per-item average scale value) for Spiritual Change. We do not interpret our observation of this pattern as empirical evidence of anything; however, the observation makes us wonder about the empirical relationship between Spiritual Change and the other four subscales and highlights the importance of assessing the internal validity of Spiritual Change to lay the groundwork for any future studies of the internal structure of growth. Spiritual Change and spiritual growth. Tedeschi and Calhoun (2004) described the PTGI subscales as measures of five domains of personal growth. The results of our comparison three (see results section) reflect a pattern among mean subscale scores in which the per-item mean score for the Spiritual Change subscale is relatively low. This pattern is empirical evidence that growth does not occur uniformly across all domains at the same time, at least for spiritual growth as measured by Spiritual Change. The occurrence of the similar pattern we observed in the samples of many studies invites the following attempt to explain the pattern. An explanation might be especially important to educators and administrators of religious colleges and universities who actively seek to promote spiritual growth of students. Developmental factors are probably at least partly responsible for the larger Spiritual Change scores in posttraumatic studies. Trauma study participants have generally been older than participants in samples of college students. Perhaps older people like those in many of the trauma-study samples are more likely than college undergraduates to describe spiritual growth. Perhaps spiritual growth is more characteristic of growth in response to trauma than of growth in response to college life. However, these two possibilities do not completely account for the pattern of interest (similar per-item subscale scores for four subscales and lower subscale score for Spiritual Change) because the pattern is not as pronounced among the five per-item subscale means reported by Tedeschi and Calhoun (1996) for their non-trauma comparison group of college undergraduates. The results of our comparison five (see results section) suggest another developmental factor. Comparison five is based on the narrow definition of spiritual growth embodied in the 2-item Spiritual Change scale. Participant interpretations of item content necessarily influence patterns among subscale scores. In particular, differences in religious background could contribute to different interpretations of Spiritual Change items. We recruited our sample members 12 years after Tedeschi and Calhoun recruited theirs, and we recruited ours from a different university in a different part of the United States. Perhaps our sample members have different religious backgrounds than the members of Tedeschi and Calhoun’s sample. Intentional facilitation of growth. Personal growth can occur in response to very different kinds of experiences, from coping with horrible trauma to caring deeply for friends and significant others. Most of these experiences, certainly most of the traumatic ones, seem to arise spontaneously. This conclusion is important to philosophers and developmental theorists because it suggests that personal growth is central to the human condition. Developmental theorists have suggested that personal growth also can occur in response to planned academic activities. This prediction is important to educators and others concerned with how to facilitate growth. Students in the current study sample attributed 40% of their personal growth to academic activities (see Table 1). We interpret these results as strong support for the prediction of personal growth in response to academic activities. Students in the current study and in the sample of our second study (Anderson & Lopez-Baez, 2011) also attributed substantial growth to a single 3-hour course designed to facilitate personal growth. We interpret these results as support for the prediction that substantial levels of personal growth can be facilitated by specific academic activities designed to do so.