title: Examining the Impact of Psychological Capital on Student Mental Health and Wellbeing in an Australian School Context: Predictive Relationships and Outcomes of a Brief Novel Intervention
Creators: name: Finch, Julie
Publisher: name: Griffith University
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Mental Health and wellbeing
subject: Psychological Capital (PsyCap)
subject: Australian School
subject: hope, (self-) efficacy, resilience and optimism (HERO)

description: Psychological Capital (PsyCap) is a theory of human behaviour that refers to a suite of four positive psychological resources comprising hope, (self-) efficacy, resilience and optimism (HERO). PsyCap theory postulates that due to shared commonalities of the HERO constructs, omnibus PsyCap (i.e., combined HERO) more powerfully predicts a range of mental health, wellbeing and occupational outcomes than any individual component part. PsyCap theory and research developed within organisational psychology as a contextual construct associated with attitudes, behaviours and performance which has been evaluated extensively with employees within workplaces and adult learners within tertiary education settings. There is extensive empirical support for PsyCap across these settings and samples, with studies consistently demonstrating associations of PsyCap with several mental health symptoms (e.g., stress, anxiety, depression), subjective wellbeing (e.g., life satisfaction) and vocational outcomes (e.g., work/study engagement, performance). Furthermore, adult PsyCap interventions have demonstrated that PsyCap can be developed in adults and may be associated with buffering mental health symptoms in the face of adverse challenges, as well as increasing wellbeing. The preventative and promotive qualities of PsyCap on outcomes of mental health and wellbeing has drawn attention from researchers seeking to assess if these effects might apply to adolescents, a population with high prevalence rates of mental health concerns, particularly anxiety and depression. Certainly, replicability of PsyCap inquiry from places of work to places of tertiary study has provided a framework for this research to be extended to a school setting. Schools, where young people have close proximal and frequent access throughout childhood and adolescence, provide a unique and powerful entry point to reach children at risk of mental illness, or with symptoms of mental ill health, via school-based interventions that might result in improvements in student wellbeing, along with greater student engagement, attendance and success at school and throughout life. Despite this, PsyCap research in young people to date has been fragmented and sparse. Some studies, seeking to determine whether PsyCap might have a therapeutic impetus, have explored PsyCap with clinically depressed teenagers. Other studies, following PsyCap’s theoretical underpinnings have tested PsyCap in adolescent students in a school setting. However, a common problem in the current literature is the absence of a developmentally sensitive and contextually grounded conceptualisation of PsyCap in children and adolescents. This crucial shortfall arguably leads to issues with reliable and valid measurement of PsyCap, drawing study conclusions into question. The overarching aim of the current program of research was to examine HERO constructs through a developmental lens, to provide a developmentally sensitive conceptualisation of PsyCap from which a PsyCap measure could be derived, and assessment and intervention could be tailored for students. The first study of this PhD explored the associations between PsyCap and mental health and subjective wellbeing outcomes, and the predictive role of PsyCap on these outcomes, in a cross-sectional sample of students aged 9 to 14 years (n = 456). The findings indicated significant negative relationships between PsyCap and mental health symptoms and significant positive relationships between PsyCap and subjective wellbeing. Further, optimism was found to be the most influential predictor of all outcome measures, although the combination of all HERO constructs was a stronger predictor on outcomes than any individual HERO construct alone. The second study was a naturalistic longitudinal observation of the impact of time and gender on mental health symptoms and subjective wellbeing in a cohort of Year 10 students aged 14 to 17 years (n = 56), prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and 3 months later during the pandemic. The predictive utility of baseline PsyCap was also examined on follow-up mental health and subjective wellbeing outcomes at 3-months assessment. Findings from this study demonstrated that there were no significant changes in mental health symptoms from time 1 to time 2; however, subjective wellbeing significantly declined between the two timepoints. There were no gender differences in the degree of change across time; however, girls had significantly higher levels of mental health symptoms than boys at both time points. Of the HERO constructs, baseline efficacy was the strongest unique predictor of mental health symptoms at time 2, and baseline hope was the strongest unique predictor of subjective wellbeing at time 2, following the onset of the pandemic, with overall PsyCap being a stronger predictor of subjective wellbeing, though not anxiety and depression, than any of the individual HERO components, after controlling for time 1 effects. The third and final study aimed to test the preliminary effectiveness and acceptability of a PsyCap intervention on a cohort of Year 12 female students aged 17 to 18 years (n = 82) in an open trial. The brief (4 modules) school-based intervention was aimed at increasing HERO capabilities and reducing perfectionism. Secondary outcomes of mental health symptoms and subjective wellbeing were also assessed. The findings of this final study indicated significant increases in levels of efficacy, optimism, and omnibus PsyCap (combined HERO), and a significant decline in perfectionism, from pre-intervention to post-intervention. There were no significant changes in hope, resilience or secondary outcomes. Informed by a conceptually sound, theoretical PsyCap framework, the findings of this current research program demonstrate the concordant and predictive relationships of student PsyCap on outcomes of mental health and wellbeing, and the potential for PsyCap to be cultivated via a school-based intervention. Taken together these findings provide an empirical foundation upon which future research can be built.