Date of Award

2023-08-31

Degree Name

PhD Leadership Studies

Dissertation Committee

Fred J. Galloway, EdD, Chair Robert Donmoyer, PhD, Member Maya Kalyanpur, PhD, Member

Keywords

Indian engineering students, techie, purpose in life, human flourishing, well-being, convergent mixed methods, multiple imputation method with Predictive Mean Matching (PMM), psychometric analysis.

Abstract

India's higher education system aims to develop well-rounded individuals with intellectual curiosity, a spirit of service, and a strong ethical foundation. However, the current state of technical higher education in India is criticized for mono-disciplinarity and rigid boundaries that do not provide an appropriate context for developing socially conscious individuals who make productive contributions to society. To address this growing concern, the Department of Higher Education in India introduced the Student Induction Program (SIP). The primary objective of the SIP is to foster purpose, which is not only meaningful to the students themselves but also to their nation; as such, the focus of this research is twofold: to assess the primary objective of the SIP and its implications on students’ well-being in a methodologically robust manner and to perform a detailed psychometric analysis of the instruments administered in an Indian context.

This convergent parallel mixed methods study, grounded in the pragmatism paradigm, used closed and open-ended survey questions from 975 individuals recruited from two prestigious national institutes of India. Preintervention and postintervention questionnaires were used to assess the program’s impact and demographic measures to identify any distinguishing outcomes. Quantitative analysis showed that the SIP boosted other-oriented purposes but did not find any statistically significant differences in purpose among the demographic groups. Qualitative analysis revealed that living in peaceful coexistence with everyone and familial purpose exhibited positive change, possibly due to sessions conducted on Universal Human Values and likely owing to family obligation, respectively. Female participants preferred familial, harmonious living and ecologically sensitive purposes, while male goals pertained to careers. Overall, the SIP boosted other-oriented purpose among many participants but still needs further development to foster purposes that are consistent with institutional ethos.

Cluster analysis was used to identify purpose profiles and found that other-oriented purposeful youth demonstrated greater well-being than disengaged youth. Psychometric analysis of the revised Stanford Purpose Instrument was satisfactory, and the Flourishing Scale was aligned with the original study. Multiple imputations were used to impute missing data. The study contributes purpose, well-being, and program assessment literature. The findings may inform similar educational interventions in India and abroad.

Document Type

Dissertation: Open Access

Department

Leadership Studies

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