Personal capacity building for the human services: The roles of curriculum and individual differences in predicting self-concept in college/university students☆

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Abstract

While much research has outlined the importance of intra-psychic factors in predicting workplace success, it is rare that attention is given to the development of these factors in training for human service professions (e.g. psychology, clergy, nursing). Accordingly, the present study explores differences in self-concept, a key intra-psychic factor, between two institutions that train human service professionals. One institution provides a self-concept program as part of its curriculum while the other provides no such program. Structural equation modeling showed that students from the former institution evinced higher scores on 10 of the 13 measured self-concept factors. However, when personality dimensions were included in modeling, only four of the original 10 self-concept differences remained. Taken together, this study demonstrates: (a) some support for the role of curriculum in self-concept development, (b) the predictive utility of personality on self-concept, and (c) the importance of controlling for such individual differences when evaluating institutional effects.

Section snippets

Conceptual and applied dimensions of the present study

Self-concept refers to individuals' multifaceted domain-specific self-perceptions and the enhancement of self-concept has long been proposed as a key responsibility of educational institutions (Shavelson, Hubner, & Stanton, 1976). In more recent years, the importance of self-concept enhancement in education has been strengthened not only through the rise of positive psychology but also through evidence suggesting that self-concept is causally related to academic achievement (Marsh & Craven, 2006

The models under focus

As it was not possible to manipulate student selection or gain pre-exposure data, the present study is a one-group post-test only design (see Cook & Campbell, 1979). Notwithstanding limitations in such designs (see Cook & Campbell, 1979), we believe that in the context of the present study there are merits in conducting research that captures the experiences of a naturalistic program that is a defensible representation of the reality of self-concept programs that can take place in educational

Participants

Participants were drawn from a college that trains clergy (institution A) and a university that trains psychologists (institution B). Both institutions are situated in Sydney, Australia. All participants in these samples (N = 523, 69% female) were completing tertiary qualifications, with 54% of students forming the clergy sample and 46% forming the psychology sample. In total, sample ages ranged from 18–58 years with a mean age of 22.54 years (SD = 6.44).

The Self Description Questionnaire III (SDQ III)

The SDQ III (Marsh, 1992) is a

Factor structure and invariance

All 18 latent factors (13 self-concept factors and five personality factors) and the single indicator variables for gender, institution, age, religiosity, and spirituality were combined into a single CFA to evaluate the fit of the a-priori factor structure (hence, a 23-factor CFA). This produced an excellent fit to the data (RMSEA = .05, CFI = .96, NNFI = .95, χ2 = 7990, df = 3846). We then assessed the invariance of the factor structure across the key groupings of gender and institution. When we

Discussion

Students at institution A reported higher levels of self-concept on 10 of the 13 factors measured (Model 1) even after controlling for demographic confounds (Model 2) and pre-existing differences in religiosity and spirituality (Model 3). However, this anticipated effect was not supported when personality was introduced to the model. The findings for personality are important in the context of institution-based research. Specifically, the confounding effect of pre-existing individual

Yields of the present study and conclusion

The present study provides an enhanced understanding of self-concept in the context of institution and personality. We recognize the data are cross-sectional (hence the need for future longitudinal work), based on self-report (hence the need for future ‘objective’ data), and quantitative (hence the need for future qualitative work). Nevertheless, there are some important applied and measurement yields resulting from the study. Firstly, educators would do well to ensure that any self-concept

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    This article was in part prepared while the second author was Visiting Research Fellow in the Department of Education at the University of Oxford.

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