TPC-Journal-V2-Issue1

The Professional Counselor \Volume 2, Issue 1 77 General Discussion We believe Study 1 provides substantial information about the validity of total PTGI scores and also of subscale scores for Spiritual Change. For this reason, we believe the results of Study 1 are of interest to researchers using the PTGI to measure adversarial or personal growth. The high levels of personal growth attributed by students to the sum of their college years and attributions of cause to academic activities will probably interest college administrators and educators. The same results led us to wonder how student growth and attributions of cause might be distributed over each college year. For this reason, Study 2 seemed a natural extension of Study 1. The descriptive results of Study 2 are among the first to reflect levels of growth attributed by graduating seniors in retrospect to each year of their undergraduate careers. We believe these results will also interest college personnel concerned with facilitating student growth. We developed the table-based approach used in Studies 1 and 2 to measure attributions of cause. Researchers can adapt the approach for use in future studies of personal growth. We believe that researchers with other research interests can use a similar approach to study a wide variety of other variables. Limitations The two studies described in the current paper are based on self-reports. Thus, the results of both are subject to the many potential validity threats associated with self-reports including additional threats to the historical validity of retrospective self-reports. Our research purposes require data with sufficient internal validity. Comparisons of the results of our three studies reflect a degree of internal validity as described in Study 1. However, PTGI scores might be associated with ceiling effects if higher levels of growth are attributed to longer time periods at diminishing rates, and percentage attributions might be associated with recency effects if more vivid recall of recent experiences leads to larger attributions of growth. Finally, because our samples are representative of populations of similar students, but not university students in general, our conclusions do not necessarily apply beyond the population represented by our samples. Future Research We plan more studies of college student growth with the long-term goal of learning how best to facilitate growth. We hope that readers can adapt our approach to measuring attributions of cause for use in future studies of personal growth and other variables. References Anderson, W. P., & Lopez-Baez, S. I. (2008). Measuring growth with the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory. Measurement and Evaluation in Counseling , 40 , 215–227. Anderson, W. P., & Lopez-Baez, S. I. (2011) Measuring personal growth attributed to a semester of college life using the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory. Journal of Counseling and Values, 56, 73–81. Chickering, A. W. (1969). Education and identity. San Francisco, CA: Josey-Bass. Chickering, A. W., & Reisser, L. (1993). Education and identity. San Francisco, CA: Josey-Bass. Cohen, J. (1960). A coefficient of agreement for nominal scales. Educational and Psychological Measurement , 20, 37–46. Hassan, K. L. (2008). Identifying indicators of student development in college. College Student Journal , 42 , 517–530. Higgins, J. W., Lauzon, L. L., Yew, A., Bratseth, C., & Worley, V. (2009). University students’ wellness—What difference can a course make? College Student Journal, 43, 766–777. Joseph, S., Linley, P. A., & Harris, G. J. (2005). Understanding positive change following trauma and adversity: A structural clarification. Journal of Loss and Trauma, 10, 83–96. Linley, P. A., & Joseph, S. (2004). Positive change following trauma and adversity: A review. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 17, 11–21.