ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychol.

Sec. Positive Psychology

Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1576783

This article is part of the Research TopicAssessing Well-being From the Third World: Psychometric Developments From Non-WEIRD CountriesView all 6 articles

Personal Growth Initiative: Confirmatory Factor Analysis, Gender Invariance, and External Validity of the Persian Version

Provisionally accepted
  • 1Department of Psychology, Faculty of Social and Educational Sciences, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway
  • 2Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Tehran, Iran
  • 3Department of Psychology, University of Marburg, Marburg, Hesse, Germany
  • 4Australian Catholic University, Sydney, Australia
  • 5Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands, Netherlands
  • 6University of Bergen, Bergen, Hordaland, Norway

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

Introduction: The current cross-sectional research was performed to verify the measurement soundness of the Personal Growth Initiative Scale-II (PGIS-II) regarding reliability, validity, and gender invariance in an Iranian sample. Methods: In an online survey, 1453 students (50.8% girls, mean age = 15.48, SD = .97) were recruited from several high schools located in Tehran to complete the Persian version of PGIS-II, Youth Self-Report (YSR) of internalizing and externalizing behavior problems, and demographic characteristics. Results: the original 4-factor structure of PGIS-II demonstrated the best fit in the Confirmatory factor analysis and was invariant across gender. Reliability estimates of this factorial model, including corrected item-total correlation, inter-item correlations, Cronbach’s alpha, Theta, and Omega were good to excellent (e.g., α = .86 to .95). Discriminant validity was upheld via the moderate correlation among PGIS-II’s subscales, and through the acceptable levels of average variance extracted. The concurrent validity of the Persian version of PGIS-II and its subscales was supported by their moderate negative correlations with internalizing and externalizing behavioral problems (r = -.20 to -.42) and their moderate positive correlations with educational performance (r = .21 to .34). Gender differences emerged, such that boys scored higher on PGIS-II and the subscale of using resources. Discussion: Overall, the PGIS-II seems suitable for application in the Persian context to capture personal growth initiative. Clinicians and school counselors should devote attention to the personal growth initiative as a key mechanism to prevent adolescents’ behavior problems and improve academic performance.

Keywords: adolescents, Concurrent validity, Gender invariance, internalizing and externalizing behavioral problems, Personal growth initiative

Received: 14 Feb 2025; Accepted: 30 Jun 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Habibi Asgarabad, Salehi Yegaei, Bromandnia, Ciarrochi, Mastrotheodoros and Wiium. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Mojtaba Habibi Asgarabad, Department of Psychology, Faculty of Social and Educational Sciences, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway

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