Personal growth initiative among Industrial Psychology students in a higher education institution in South Africa

Abstract

Industrial and organisational (I-O) psychology is a profession which entails a broad spectrum of working activities. One of these activities is workplace counselling which forms a significant part of the internship programme. However, interns often lack the necessary skills to provide counselling. In order to function in a counselling role, the I-O psychologist should have the necessary training to be equipped with counselling skills. It is evident from previous studies that I-O psychology practitioners often feel they lack the ability to counsel individuals sufficiently. Therefore it is important for I-O psychology students to focus on their development to become effective counsellors by focussing on their inter- and intrapersonal skills as part of the skills package as a counsellor. Personal Growth Initiative (PGI) is one way of measuring a person's intrapersonal skills in terms of the individual's intention to change and grow. The main aim of this study was to measure the prevalence of PGI among I-O psychology students. Participation in this study was limited to I-O psychology students (N = 568). The students differed in terms of gender, age, ethnicity, and language. The results provided the researcher with an indication of what the students' intention to grow and develop as an individual entails in order to provide a basis for further research, namely to develop a training programme for I-O psychology students as workplace counsellors.. The PGI of the students were measured by means of the Personal Growth Initiative Scale (PGIS). This is a nine-item instrument with a six-point Likert type scale ranging from 0 (definitely disagree) to 6 (definitely agree). The results indicated that PGI is prevalent among the I-O psychology students. Furthermore, the study showed that PGI is relevant to all gender and ethnic groups amongst I-O psychology students. Significant differences were found for the different ages and languages. From the results it is recommended that higher education institutions adapt training programmes to foster personal growth initiative amongst I-O psychology students. Future research can also make use of the PGIS-II to measure PGI as this is the latest version of the construct. In terms of the organisation it is recommended that I-O practitioners should be more growth focussed.