Construct Validation and Prediction of the School Psychological Capital in Two Chinese Cultural Contexts

Abstract

Psychological Capital (PsyCap) has received much attention in industrial-organizational research because it is linked to a broad spectrum of adaptive work-related outcomes. However, few studies have been conducted on PsyCap in non-Western school contexts, especially in the ethnic minority areas of Mainland China. The present study aims to validate the school PsyCap scale, examine the latent mean differences of school PsyCap across Dai and Han groups, and verify the correlation between school PsyCap and academic engagement, achievement emotions, and academic achievement in a sample of 769 Chinese school children (Han students = 249, Dai students = 520) in the seventh and eighth grades. Results demonstrated that the Chinese version of the school PsyCap scale had excellent psychometric properties. Besides, there were no significant differences in the mean level of school PsyCap between the two cultural groups of Chinese Dai and Han. However, the multi-group second-order CFA model showed that the mean level of Dai students’ resilience was lower than that of Chinese Han. The findings also showed that school PsyCap has positive predictive effects on optimal academic outcomes (i.e., academic engagement, enjoyment, and academic achievement) but negatively affect boredom. This study enriches the understanding of school PsyCap from a cross-cultural perspective. Both theoretical and practical implications are discussed.