Personal responsibility: an integrative review of conceptual and measurement issues of the construct

Abstract

This integrative literature review examines educational research that focuses on quantitative measurement of the construct of personal responsibility, in studies which included participants from middle childhood to young adulthood. National policies in education are increasingly concerned with values and skills that students develop through their education to take personal responsibility for their choices and actions. There were 11 studies that met selection criteria for the review. The review explored the definitions of personal responsibility used and the nature and quality of the measures developed to measure the construct. There are three key findings. First, there are strong commonalities in the definitions of personal responsibility, with self-control of behavioural choices identified as a key component of the construct in all studies. Second, there is a lack of agreement as to whether personal responsibility is a uni- or multidimensional construct. Third, there is a strong need for robust scale development, so reliable and valid measures of personal responsibility can be applied in studies exploring the development of personal responsibility from middle childhood to early adulthood and for use in intervention studies. Understanding the ways in which educational researchers have defined, conceptualised and measured personal responsibility provide directions for future research.

Keywords:

• Personal responsibility
• integrative literature review
• quantitative measurement
• student development
• values

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Adjunct Professor Donna Berthelsen for her feedback on earlier drafts of this manuscript, and for her continuing mentoring and support.