Psi Chi Presentation

On April 2nd, the PTG lab presented their first study at a Psi Chi gathering.  Their study was entitled, “Examining Posttraumatic Growth in Adolescents: A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Japanese and American High School Students.  The overall purpose of this study was to examine PTG in high school students, or in other words an adolescent population due to limited research that focuses on PTG in adolescents.

From this purpose, 5 hypotheses emerged: 1). American high school students will report events like Accident/Injury or Assault, while Japanese high school students will report events like Natural Disaster or Family Issues.  2.) American high school students will provide individualistic centered responses regarding personal growth while Japanese high school students will provide collectivistic centered responses.  3.) Females overall (regardless of nation) will report higher PTG scores.  4.) American students overall will show higher PTG scores than Japanese students.  5.) The type of event selected to disclose will influence total PTG scores in American high school students but not in Japanese high school students.  Frequencies, a chi-squared test, a factorial ANOVA and two One-way ANOVAs were conducted in order to test these hypotheses.

The results showed that for hypothesis 1, American high school students most commonly disclosed death as their stressful life event, while Japanese students reported Natural Disaster.  There were statistically significant differences in the stressful event selected between American and Japanese high school students.  For hypothesis 2, American students provided responses such as “Maturity/Development” while Japanese students provided answers along similar lines such as “Adult.”  For hypotheses 3 and 4, there was a significant interaction between nation and gender on total PTG scores.  Overall, U.S. participants showed higher PTG scores than Japanese students, but showed no significant gender differences.  For Japanese students, females significantly showed higher PTG scores than their male counterparts.  For hypothesis 5, type of event did not effect total PTG scores for American students, but did affect PTG for Japanese students.  Specifically, significant differences were shown between Natural Disaster and Death, as well as Natural Disaster and Family Problems.

Each of the lab members worked extremely hard on this presentation and it definitely showed.  Congratulations lab members, job well done!

McGuire, K., Thomas, I., Elam, S., & Boulos, A. (2013, April). Examining posttraumatic growth in adolescents: A cross-cultural comparison of Japanese and American high school students. Research presentation at Psi Chi Research Colloquium, Oakland University, MI.

Listen to the presentation below: