Personal Growth Initiative Scale II (PGIS-II)

Abstract

The Personal Growth Initiative Scale-II (PGIS-II) is a multidimensional, 16-item self-report psychological instrument designed to assess personal growth initiative (PGI), conceptualized as an individual’s active, intentional, and deliberate engagement in the process of personal development across the lifespan. Developed by Christine Robitschek and colleagues (2012) as an empirical and conceptual advancement over the original unidimensional Personal Growth Initiative Scale (PGIS; Robitschek, 1998), the PGIS-II delineates personal growth into both cognitive and behavioral mechanisms. The instrument operationalizes the multidimensional construct through four distinct yet intercorrelated subscales: Readiness for Change, Planfulness, Using Resources, and Intentional Behavior.

Administered via a 6-point Likert scale ranging from 0 (Disagree Strongly) to 5 (Agree Strongly), the PGIS-II yields individual subscale mean scores as well as an overarching composite score termed the Total Mean Score. Psychometric evaluations demonstrate superior structural stability, robust internal consistency reliability across clinical, collegiate, and diverse multicultural samples (with Cronbach’s alpha coefficients consistently ranging from .79 to .90 across subscales and reaching above .92 for the total scale), acceptable test-retest reliability across short- and medium-term intervals, and robust construct, convergent, discriminant, and incremental validity. The instrument effectively predicts adaptive psychological functioning, eudaimonic well-being, vocational adaptability, resilience against affective distress, and therapeutic response, serving as a cornerstone assessment in positive psychology, counseling psychology, and preventative mental health research.

Keywords

personal growth initiative, PGIS-II, deliberate self-development, readiness for change, planfulness, resource utilization, intentional behavior, positive psychology, psychometrics, counseling assessment, eudaimonic well-being

Authors

The Personal Growth Initiative Scale-II was developed through a systematic collaborative research program led by Christine Robitschek, Ph.D., along with Matthew W. Ashton, Carrie C. Spering, Nicole Geiger, Danielle Byers, Greg C. Schotts, and Makenzie Thoen.

• Christine Robitschek, Ph.D.: Primary investigator and Professor Emerita in the Department of Psychological Sciences at Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas, United States. Dr. Robitschek’s pioneering scholarship established the theoretical foundation and empirical measurement of intentional personal growth within counseling psychology.
• Matthew W. Ashton, M.A., Carrie C. Spering, Ph.D., Nicole Geiger, Ph.D., Danielle Byers, Ph.D., Greg C. Schotts, M.A., & Makenzie Thoen, Ph.D.: Co-researchers affiliated with the Department of Psychology at Texas Tech University who participated in the iterative item development, exploratory factor modeling, and multi-sample confirmatory psychometric validation studies.

Institutional Address: Department of Psychological Sciences, Texas Tech University, Box 42051, Lubbock, TX 79409-2051, USA.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Personal Growth Initiative Scale-II (PGIS-II) is to quantify an individual’s deliberate and active orientation toward self-change and self-improvement across the cognitive, motivational, and behavioral domains of human functioning. While human development inherently encompasses spontaneous maturation, biological aging, and reactive adaptation to environmental pressures, Personal Growth Initiative (PGI) specifically isolates self-directed, conscious, and goal-oriented personal development. The PGIS-II was constructed to rectify the psychometric and theoretical constraints of its predecessor, the original 9-item unidimensional PGIS, which captured a global propensity toward self-actualization but failed to illuminate the discrete procedural stages of intentional self-transformation.

In clinical and counseling settings, the PGIS-II functions as a diagnostic and process monitoring tool. Clinicians employ the instrument during intake evaluations to gauge an individual’s baseline capacity for self-regulation, personal agency, and insight into change-readiness. Because therapeutic interventions across modalities—including cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), and humanistic-existential therapies—rely heavily upon the client’s intentional mobilization toward change, profiling a client across the four specific PGIS-II dimensions assists in tailoring individualized treatment strategies. For instance, a client exhibiting high Readiness for Change but low Planfulness requires concrete goal-structuring interventions rather than motivational interviewing, whereas a client exhibiting deficits in Using Resources may benefit from assertiveness training or interpersonal barrier analysis.

In academic, organizational, and career counseling research, the PGIS-II provides a standardized metric for exploring the antecedents and consequences of personal agency. Researchers utilize the scale to evaluate how intentional self-change mitigates burnout, bolsters vocational identity crystallization, promotes academic self-efficacy, and fosters post-traumatic growth following critical life events. By disaggregating cognitive readiness and planning from active behavioral implementation and external resource mobilization, the PGIS-II affords researchers fine-grained empirical insight into the exact mechanisms that mediate the link between human intentionality and flourishing mental health.

Psychological Construct

The theoretical construct measured by the PGIS-II is Personal Growth Initiative (PGI), defined as a person’s active, purposeful, and intentional involvement in the process of initiating self-directed change and personal development. PGI does not reflect accidental evolution or externally coerced behavioral compliance; rather, it embodies an internal cognitive-behavioral architecture that enables individuals to navigate identity development, personal mastery, and environmental mastery. The PGIS-II operationalizes this overarching metacognitive and behavioral construct across four interrelated dimensions:

1. Readiness for Change

Readiness for Change represents the initial cognitive and appraisal phase of the personal growth process. It captures an individual’s internal awareness, discernment, and cognitive appraisal that a specific aspect of the self requires modification, paired with the judgment that one is psychologically prepared to embark on that change process. Individuals with elevated readiness possess acute self-monitoring capabilities; they can differentiate between vague dissatisfaction and actionable opportunities for self-improvement. Conversely, low scores on this dimension signify ambivalence, defensive denial of developmental needs, or premature cognitive foreclosure regarding one’s self-concept.

2. Planfulness

Planfulness comprises the instrumental cognitive architecture necessary to translate change awareness into a structured course of action. This dimension encompasses the ability to articulate realistic, measurable, and achievable developmental goals, formulate step-by-step strategies, and anticipate temporal and environmental parameters required for personal execution. Planfulness bridges the gap between intrinsic motivation and execution by operationalizing abstract developmental wishes into pragmatic self-regulatory schemas. Deficits in planfulness manifest as aimless wandering, unrealistic expectations, or paralysis when confronted with multifaceted self-improvement tasks.

3. Using Resources

Using Resources represents the externalizing, interpersonal, and environmental facet of personal growth. Because individual change does not occur in a social or structural vacuum, this dimension measures the degree to which an individual actively identifies, seeks out, and harnesses external assistance—such as professional counseling, peer mentorship, informational literature, academic coursework, and community networks—to advance their developmental objectives. High resource utilization reflects psychological openness, social assertiveness, and freedom from help-seeking stigma, whereas low scores often correlate with hyper-individualistic self-reliance or perceived isolation.

4. Intentional Behavior

Intentional Behavior embodies the direct, observable behavioral mobilization toward self-change. Distinct from the preparatory cognitive stages of readiness and planning, this dimension captures whether an individual consistently enacts deliberate developmental activities, capitalizes on emerging environmental growth opportunities, and sustains ongoing effort toward self-actualization in daily life. It reflects the execution of behavioral agency, separating individuals who merely contemplate transformation from those who actively participate in continuous self-betterment.

Theoretical Framework

The development of the PGIS-II is grounded in an integrative synthesis of several prominent psychological paradigms, most notably social cognitive theory, self-regulation theory, developmental life-span psychology, and the humanistic tradition of positive psychological functioning.

Social Cognitive Theory and Human Agency

At its core, the PGIS-II is anchored in Albert Bandura’s social cognitive theory and his conception of triadic reciprocal causation and human agency. Bandura posited that individuals are not merely reactive organisms shaped by environmental forces or driven by subconscious impulses; rather, they are self-organizing, proactive, self-reflecting, and self-regulating agents. Personal growth initiative represents a tangible operationalization of personal agency within the domain of identity development and character formation. The interplay between cognitive foresight (Planfulness), perceived self-efficacy in executing change (Readiness for Change), behavioral execution (Intentional Behavior), and environmental interaction (Using Resources) reflects Bandura’s model of proactive personal adaptation.

Action-Phase Models and Intentional Self-Development

The architecture of the PGIS-II directly parallels classical action-phase models of motivation and volition, such as the Rubicon Model of Action Phases developed by Heinz Heckhausen and Peter Gollwitzer. In these models, goal pursuit traverses distinct cognitive thresholds: a pre-decisional deliberative phase (akin to Readiness for Change), a pre-actional volitional planning phase (akin to Planfulness), and an actional execution phase (akin to Intentional Behavior). Furthermore, the scale resonates with Jochen Brandtstädter’s model of intentional self-development across the lifespan, which conceptualizes the self as both the producer and the product of personal development. Through intentional self-development, individuals formulate subjective theories of their own personal trajectory, actively modifying their behavioral repertoires to match idealized developmental goals.

The Transtheoretical Model and Eudaimonic Theory

The PGIS-II also borrows conceptual insights from Prochaska and DiClemente’s Transtheoretical Model of Change (TTM), particularly regarding the progression from contemplation and preparation into concrete action. However, while TTM predominantly originated in the context of eliminating pathological behaviors (e.g., substance cessation, health risk reduction), the PGIS-II focuses on generative, positive developmental transitions. This aligns the instrument firmly with Carol Ryff’s model of psychological well-being (specifically the “Personal Growth” dimension) and Carl Rogers’ humanistic conception of the “fully functioning person,” emphasizing the innate, proactive drive toward self-actualization and competence.

Validity

The validity of the PGIS-II has been confirmed through empirical investigations utilizing diverse samples, including multi-institutional university cohorts, adult community populations, and clinical outpatient groups.

Construct and Structural Validity

Robitschek et al. (2012) established structural construct validity by administering the PGIS-II across five distinct exploratory and confirmatory samples totaling over 3,000 participants. Exploratory factor analyses (EFA) on initial item pools consistently converged on a 16-item, four-factor solution accounting for substantial total variance. Subsequent confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) verified that both a four-factor correlated model and a hierarchical second-order model (where the four factors load onto a general Personal Growth Initiative meta-factor) provide an excellent fit to empirical data, outperforming alternative single-factor or two-factor models.

Convergent Validity

The convergent validity of the PGIS-II is supported by statistically significant associations with theoretically aligned psychological constructs. The total scale and its individual subscales demonstrate strong positive correlations with:

• Eudaimonic and Subjective Well-Being: Robust positive associations with Carol Ryff’s Psychological Well-Being Scales (particularly Personal Growth, Environmental Mastery, and Purpose in Life, with correlation coefficients ranging from r = .50 to .68, p < .001) and Diener’s Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS; r ≈ .40 to .52).
• Generalized Self-Efficacy and Hope: Moderate-to-strong positive correlations with the General Self-Efficacy Scale (GSES; r ≈ .55 to .65) and Snyder’s Adult Hope Scale (measuring agency and pathways; r ≈ .50 to .62).
• Adaptive Coping and Proactive Personality: Positive associations with proactive coping strategies, cognitive reappraisal, and Carver’s Brief COPE problem-focused subscales.

Discriminant and Incremental Validity

Discriminant validity was established by observing low or non-significant correlations with unrelated or conceptually distinct constructs. The PGIS-II exhibits weak to non-significant correlations with social desirability scales (e.g., Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale, r < .15), indicating that participant responses are largely unconfounded by social impression management. Furthermore, the PGIS-II is negatively correlated with psychological distress, depression (measured via the CES-D or BDI-II; r ≈ -.30 to -.45), and state/trait anxiety. Hierarchical multiple regression models have repeatedly confirmed the scale’s incremental validity: the PGIS-II explains unique, significant variance in life satisfaction, vocational identity, and post-traumatic adaptation even after controlling for the Big Five personality traits (e.g., conscientiousness and extraversion) and baseline self-esteem.

Reliability

Extensive psychometric investigations confirm that the PGIS-II exhibits high internal consistency and longitudinal temporal stability across diverse administrative settings.

Internal Consistency Reliability

In the scale development and validation studies by Robitschek et al. (2012), Cronbach’s alpha (α) coefficients across exploratory and confirmatory samples demonstrated exceptional reliability across all four subscales and the total score:

• Readiness for Change: α = .79 to .84 across collegiate and adult community cohorts.
• Planfulness: α = .82 to .87 across all developmental samples.
• Using Resources: α = .80 to .86 across normative evaluations.
• Intentional Behavior: α = .84 to .89 across evaluated cohorts.
• Total PGIS-II Score: α = .91 to .94, reflecting high internal cohesion of the overarching personal growth initiative construct.

Cross-cultural adaptations (e.g., Turkish, Italian, Chinese, Spanish, and Dutch translations) have corroborated these values, yielding subscale internal consistency metrics reliably exceeding the standard psychometric threshold of α = .75.

Test-Retest Temporal Stability

The temporal stability of the PGIS-II has been assessed across various longitudinal intervals:

• 1-Week to 2-Week Interval: Robitschek et al. (2012) reported test-retest reliability coefficients ranging from r = .74 to .82 across individual subscales, with the Total Mean Score reaching r = .84 (p < .001).
• 6-Week Interval: Longitudinal stability remained acceptable, with subscale coefficients ranging from r = .60 to .72, reflecting the theoretical conceptualization of PGI as an enduring yet malleable set of dynamic skills responsive to life events and interventions.

Factor Analysis

The structural formulation of the PGIS-II was validated using sequential exploratory factor analysis (EFA) followed by confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) across independent split samples.

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

The initial validation began with a broad pool of over 60 candidate items reflecting the multidimensional theoretical operationalization of PGI. Iterative principal axis factoring with promax (oblique) rotation was conducted to permit natural correlations among latent factors. Scree plots, eigenvalues-greater-than-one criteria, and parallel analyses identified four distinct, theoretically coherent factors accounting for the majority of common variance. Items with factor loadings below .40 or cross-loadings greater than .30 were iteratively removed, resulting in a refined 16-item instrument.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)

Confirmatory factor analyses testing multiple alternative structural models were conducted on large validation samples. The tested models included: (a) a single-factor unidimensional model, (b) an orthogonal four-factor model, (c) a correlated four-factor model, and (d) a hierarchical, second-order factor model where a global Personal Growth Initiative factor accounts for the shared variance among the four first-order factors.

The empirical findings revealed that the correlated four-factor model and the second-order hierarchical model demonstrated superior fit across standard structural equation modeling (SEM) indices:

• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): .94 to .97 across confirmatory cohorts (exceeding the ≥ .90 threshold for acceptable fit and ≥ .95 for excellent fit).
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): .93 to .96 across independent test samples.
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): .048 to .062 (with 90% confidence intervals bounded below .07, demonstrating close model fit).
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): .038 to .051, well within acceptable tolerances.

All 16 standardized factor loadings were statistically significant (p < .001) and substantial in magnitude (ranging from .65 to .88), confirming that each item reliably reflects its targeted latent construct.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

The Personal Growth Initiative Scale-II is structured as an efficient, self-administered psychological rating tool.

• Instrument Name: Personal Growth Initiative Scale-II (PGIS-II)
• Author: Dr. Christine Robitschek (Copyright © 2008)
• Primary Reference Publication: Robitschek et al. (2012), Journal of Counseling Psychology
• Assessment Type: Multidimensional self-report rating scale
• Target Population: Adolescents, university students, and adults
• Number of Items: 16 items
• Administration Time: Approximately 3 to 5 minutes
• Response Format: 6-point Likert scale (0 = Disagree Strongly, 1 = Disagree Somewhat, 2 = Disagree a Little, 3 = Agree a Little, 4 = Agree Somewhat, 5 = Agree Strongly)
• Subscale Breakdown:
  • Readiness for Change (4 items): Items 2, 8, 11, 16
  • Planfulness (5 items): Items 1, 3, 5, 10, 13
  • Using Resources (3 items): Items 6, 12, 14
  • Intentional Behavior (4 items): Items 4, 7, 9, 15
• Scoring Methodology:
  • All 16 items are positively keyed (no reverse scoring is required).
  • Subscale Mean Scores: Calculated by summing the numerical responses for the items comprising each subscale and dividing by the number of items on that subscale. The resulting subscale score ranges from 0 to 5.
  • Total Mean Score: Calculated by summing the four subscale mean scores and dividing by 4. This computation ensures each dimension contributes equal weight to the overall PGI score, regardless of the differing number of items per subscale.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Personal Growth Initiative Scale-II was developed and copyrighted by Dr. Christine Robitschek in 2008, with the comprehensive empirical psychometric validation study published in 2012 in the Journal of Counseling Psychology (American Psychological Association).

Copyright and Usage Policy: The PGIS-II is protected by intellectual property copyright laws (© 2008, Christine Robitschek, Ph.D.). The author has formally released the instrument for free use in research, educational, and non-commercial clinical practice. No royalties, permissions fees, or written formal licenses are required for scholars, students, or licensed clinicians utilizing the scale for non-commercial investigations. However, commercial use—including integration into fee-for-service software, commercial hiring or HR assessment batteries, or monetized digital platforms—is strictly prohibited without obtaining explicit written authorization and contractual licensing from the copyright holder.

References

• Bandura, A. (2001). Social cognitive theory: An agentic perspective. Annual Review of Psychology, 52(1), 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.52.1.1
• Brandtstädter, J. (1998). Action perspectives on human development. In R. M. Lerner (Ed.), Handbook of child psychology: Vol. 1. Theoretical models of human development (5th ed., pp. 807–863). John Wiley & Sons.
• Gollwitzer, P. M. (1999). Implementation intentions: Strong effects of simple plans. American Psychologist, 54(7), 493–503. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.54.7.493
• Prochaska, J. O., & DiClemente, C. C. (1983). Stages and processes of self-change of smoking: Toward an integrative model of change. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 51(3), 390–395. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-006X.51.3.390
• Robitschek, C. (1998). Personal growth initiative: The construct and its measure. Measurement and Evaluation in Counseling and Development, 30(4), 183–198. https://doi.org/10.1080/07481756.1998.12068941
• Robitschek, C., Ashton, M. W., Spering, C. C., Geiger, N., Byers, D., Schotts, G. C., & Thoen, M. (2012). Development and psychometric properties of the Personal Growth Initiative Scale – II. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 59(2), 274–287. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0027310
• Robitschek, C., & Cook, S. W. (1999). The influence of personal growth initiative on well-being and psychological functioning. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 46(2), 197–204. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0167.46.2.197
• Ryff, C. D. (1989). Happiness is everything, or is it? Explorations on the meaning of psychological well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57(6), 1069–1081. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.57.6.1069

Items of the Scale