Psychological Literacy Weakly Differentiates Students by Discipline and Year of Enrolment.

Brody Heritage,Lynne D Roberts,Natalie Gasson

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00162

Abstract

Psychological literacy, a construct developed to reflect the types of skills graduates of a psychology degree should possess and be capable of demonstrating, has recently been scrutinized in terms of its measurement adequacy. The recent development of a multi-item measure encompassing the facets of psychological literacy has provided the potential for improved validity in measuring the construct. We investigated the known-groups validity of this multi-item measure of psychological literacy to examine whether psychological literacy could predict (a) students’ course of enrolment and (b) students’ year of enrolment. Five hundred and fifteen undergraduate psychology students, 87 psychology/human resource management students, and 83 speech pathology students provided data. In the first year cohort, the reflective processes (RPs) factor significantly predicted psychology and psychology/human resource management course enrolment, although no facets significantly differentiated between psychology and speech pathology enrolment. Within the second year cohort, generic graduate attributes (GGAs) and RPs differentiated psychology and speech pathology course enrolment. GGAs differentiated first-year and second-year psychology students, with second-year students more likely to have higher scores on this factor. Due to weak support for known-groups validity, further measurement refinements are recommended to improve the construct’s utility.

Highlights

The construct of psychological literacy has become an integral part of discussions around the skills a graduate from a psychology degree should have (McGovern et al, 2010; Cranney et al, 2011b, 2012; Trapp et al, 2011; Mair et al, 2013; Karantzas, 2014; Baker, 2015)
Critical thinking loaded on reflective processes (RPs) in one sample, and on generic graduate attributes (GGAs) in a second sample, with the latter loading argued by the authors as being more valid due to the distinction between reflecting on the behavioral or mental processes of the self and others (RPs), and the applied problem-solving focus of the critical thinking items
At the time of entering their degree, group membership differences were predicted only by the factor of RPs between the psychology and psychology-HRM students, with the remaining psychological literacy factors not indicating any significant value in predicting group membership

Summary

Introduction

The construct of psychological literacy has become an integral part of discussions around the skills a graduate from a psychology degree should have (McGovern et al, 2010; Cranney et al, 2011b, 2012; Trapp et al, 2011; Mair et al, 2013; Karantzas, 2014; Baker, 2015). The three factors were reflective processes (RPs), generic graduate attributes (GGAs), and psychology as a helping profession (PHP) (see Figure 1). Critical thinking loaded on RPs in one sample, and on GGAs in a second sample, with the latter loading argued by the authors as being more valid due to the distinction between reflecting on the behavioral or mental processes of the self and others (RPs), and the applied problem-solving focus of the critical thinking items (a generic university graduate attribute). PHP comprised personal growth and applied helping The finding of both generic and psychology-specific factors in our previous research (Roberts et al, 2015) suggested that only some aspects of psychological literacy may be specific to psychology graduates, but this has yet to be tested

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Conclusion