TPC-Journal-V2-Issue1

76 The Professional Counselor \Volume 2, Issue 1 Table 4 Student percentage attributions of yearly growth in retrospect to academic and non-academic experiences by year (N = 108 students) Probability note. Attributions of men and women are combined because no sex differences were by row for t , α =.05 (2-tail). Experience Total Per-item Total Year M SD M SD M SD Freshman 8.83 7.63 15.59 9.22 24.35 11.72 Sophomore 7.13 4.33 10.37 6.43 17.50 7.66 Junior 11.52 7.74 15.29 10.10 26.85 10.13 Senior 11.11 7.74 20.23 10.28 31.30 10.49 Total 38.59 14.81 61.41 14.81 100.00 -- Participants were asked to identify the year of occurrence of the single experience (as defined by participants) to which they attributed the most personal growth (question not shown in Appendix B). Year and corresponding frequencies of selection by participants are: freshman (22), sophomore (9), junior (35), and senior (42). Participants also were asked to identify whether the experience that contributed most to growth was academic or non-academic. Type of experience and frequencies of selection are: academic (27) and non-academic (81). Finally, participants were asked to describe (in words) the experience that contributed most to their growth. Illustrative descriptions include: “getting a job,” “finding a new girlfriend,” “death of a friend,” “learning to live with fraternity brothers,” and “finishing my undergraduate thesis.” Discussion Measures The current study is the fourth we have conducted based on the PTGI for measuring student personal growth and the third based on a table for collecting attributions of cause in the form of quantitative percentages and qualitative descriptions. We believe the results of the four studies support the utility of both measures for measuring growth and the flexibility of both for measuring growth under different circumstances. College-Student Personal Growth The mean PTGI score and standard deviation described by the 108 college seniors with a college career of exactly 8 semesters in the sample of Study 2, M = 68.01 ( SD = 12.01) are almost identical to the corresponding statistics described by the 122 college students with a mean college career of 6.54 ( SD = 1.34) semesters in the sample of Study 1, M = 69.09 ( SD = 11.52). We had expected the mean PTGI score of Sample 2 to exceed that of Sample 1 because the results of our previous studies reflected higher mean scores for more college semesters (Anderson & Lopez-Baez, 2008, 2011; Study 1 of this paper). The simplest way to explain the similarity between the total scores of Study 1 and Study 2 is to remind ourselves that we are comparing data from a cohort as opposed to longitudinal studies, and remind ourselves that college student growth varies widely among students in each sample as illustrated by the large standard deviations for total PTGI scores in each of our studies. The results reflected in Table 4 suggest that the college seniors in our sample attributed substantial growth to both academic and non-academic experiences during all four college years. We believe this pattern is evidence that college faculty and staff can influence the personal growth of many students during every year of a student cohort’s progression toward graduation.