The development of personal self-activation inventory

Abstract

The article proposes a working definition of the concept of personal self-activation, which implies psychological activation based on 1) perception, evaluation, internal processing of external signals, acceptance of the most valuable and meaningful for a person; 2) the desire to preserve the optimal functional and emotional states; 3) solving vital problems. The stages of the development and validation of new Personal Self-Activation Inventory are described. Personal Self-Activation Inventory consists of three scales: independence scale, physical activation scale and psychological activation scale, the total scores on which give the general level of personal self-activation. Approbation and validation of the methodology were carried out with different groups of respondents: teachers, psychologists, students, managers, etc. (N = 78 for pilot sampling, N = 254 for main sampling). It is established that the propose Personal Self-Activation Inventory has satisfactory internal and external validity and reliability and can be used both for research purposes and for solving applied problems. In particular, sex comparison shows that all three scales are equally expressed for women while for men the scales form a clear hierarchy from psychological activation (least value) to independence scale. Men and women do not differ in the scores of physical activation and psychological activation but independence score for men is much higher than for women. Sex differences were not found for the total score of the Personal Self-Activation Inventory.