Validation and Prediction of the School Psychological Capital Among Chinese College Students

Abstract

This study validated the school psychological capital (PsyCap) scale in the Chinese context and examined the predictive effect of PsyCap resources on academic engagement and achievement emotions. Self-report data for PsyCap resources, student engagement, enjoyment, anxiety, and boredom toward English learning were collected from 1,000 sophomores. Item-level analyses and confirmatory factor analysis were used to verify the validity of the school PsyCap scale, and structural equation modeling was applied to reveal the predictive effect of school PsyCap resources on academic engagement and achievement emotions. Results showed that the school PsyCap scale retained superior psychometric properties. Besides, PsyCap resources were demonstrated to have a positive relationship to academic engagement and enjoyment, and a negative relationship to anxiety and boredom. The effectiveness of the school PsyCap scale was verified among Chinese college students, and besides the traditional predictors, school PsyCap is also critically important for students’ academic engagement and achievement emotions. Limitations and implications are discussed.

Fostering Academic Engagement in Post-graduate Students: Assessing the Role of Positive Emotions, Positive Psychology, and Stress

“…Based on our findings, the cognitive resources of students, PsyCap has shown a positive effect on academic engagement behavior, another form, and a source of growth and learning for students. Our findings also supported this theoretical assumption and are also consistent with prior literature ( Luthans et al, 2012 ; Carmona-Halty et al, 2021 ; Kang et al, 2021 ; Saman and Wirawan, 2021 ). Keeping this perspective in view, it can be suggested that the accumulation of positive psychological resources in the form of PsyCap can help individuals to enhance their performance not just in academics ( Luthans et al, 2014 ) but in general occupational settings as well ( Luthans et al, 2007b , 2012 ).…”

“…With the advent of positive psychology, its application has seen tremendous growth in different industrial sectors, be it production, services, or even the educational sector ( Avey et al, 2010 ; He et al, 2019 ; Carmona-Halty et al, 2021 ; Kang et al, 2021 ; Saleem, 2022 ). For the educational sector, contemporary research has witnessed the augmentation of students’ academic engagement through their positive emotions and positive psychology ( Carmona-Halty et al, 2021 ; Dewaele and Li, 2021 ; Luthans et al, 2021 ).…”

“…The notion of positive psychology gave birth to the construct known as psychological capital (PsyCap), an important factor that can improve efficiency and competitiveness ( Luthans et al, 2004 ) as well as the academic outcomes ( Luthans et al, 2012 ). However, prior research has covered mostly high-school/sophomore students ( Carmona-Halty et al, 2021 ) and university undergraduate students ( Luthans et al, 2014 , 2021 ; Kang et al, 2021 ; Saman and Wirawan, 2021 ), with no studies conducted on post-graduate research students, i.e., Ph.D. scholars.…”

Psychological capital in university students: analysis of scientific activity in the scopus database

“…The most influential countries in terms of production were China with 61 documents ( Bi and Jin, 2021 ; Cui, 2021 ; Kang et al., 2021 ; Shan et al., 2021 ; Xu and Zhang, 2021 ), followed by Spain, United Kingdom, Australia and United States with 10, 10, 8, 8 documents respectively. As for institutions of affiliation of the authors, the universities of Curtin, Tilburg, Jaume I and of Arts and Sciences of Chongqing stand out.…”

Teachers Self-Efficacy and Employee Brand Based Equity: A Perspective of College Students

“…These human resource management must contribute something beyond technological skills, academic talents, contacts, and networking (social capital) to the table; they must also contribute strong psychological capital to the table. As a result, if the main purpose of higher education is to equip our students to be successful in the workforce, we must move beyond teaching technical and intellectual skills to focus on the development of a person’s positive psychological capital ( Luthans et al, 2013 ; Onivehu, 2020 ; Kang et al, 2021 ). In the current scope of our study, it was assumed that academic psychological capital could aid in the relationship between teachers’ self-efficacy and employee-based brand equity.…”