Coaching and the Development of Psychological Capital : A Quasi-Experimental Study

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether coaching can foster psychological capital, a composite factor of self-efficacy, optimism, hope, and resilience. For this purpose, we employed the quasi-experimental pretest-posttest design, and recruited 108 undergraduate students from a university in South Korea. 58 of the participants were assigned to the treatment group, where they received a series of one-on-one coaching sessions with qualified coaches over the course of 10 weeks. Another 50 students were assigned to the control group and participated in career information sessions. As expected, analyses of the data collected before and after the interventions revealed that changes in psychological capital were observed in the treatment group, but not in the control group. The findings support that coaching interventions can help individuals build psychological capital.