Assessing personal initiative among vocational training studentsdevelopment and validation of a new measure

  1. Balluerka Lasa, Nekane 1
  2. Gorostiaga Manterola, Arantxa 1
  3. Ulacia, Imanol 1
  1. 1 Universidad del País Vasco/Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea
    info

    Universidad del País Vasco/Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea

    Lejona, España

    ROR https://ror.org/000xsnr85

Revista:
The Spanish Journal of Psychology

ISSN: 1138-7416

Año de publicación: 2014

Volumen: 17

Páginas: 1-9

Tipo: Artículo

DOI: 10.1017/SJP.2014.80 DIALNET GOOGLE SCHOLAR lock_openAcceso abierto editor

Otras publicaciones en: The Spanish Journal of Psychology

Resumen

Personal initiative characterizes people who are proactive, persistent and self-starting when facing the difficulties that arise in achieving goals. Despite its importance in the educational field there is a scarcity of measures to assess students� personal initiative. Thus, the aim of the present study was to develop a questionnaire to assess this variable in the academic environment and to validate it for adolescents and young adults. The sample comprised 244 vocational training students. The questionnaire showed a factor structure including three factors (Proactivity-Prosocial behavior, Persistence and Self-Starting) with acceptable indices of internal consistency (ranging between a = .57 and a =.73) and good convergent validity with respect to the Self-Reported Initiative scale. Evidence of external validity was also obtained based on the relationships between personal initiative and variables such as self-efficacy, enterprising attitude, responsibility and control aspirations, conscientiousness, and academic achievement. The results indicate that this new measure is very useful for assessing personal initiative among vocational training students.

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