The Role of Personal Growth Initiative in Predicting Changes in Perceived Community Resilience During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Three-Year Longitudinal Study

Abstract

The purpose of the current study was to examine changes in community resilience and personal growth initiative (PGI) skills over time and the reciprocal relation between community resilience and PGI skills. Six hundred twenty-two adults (M_age = 37.74, SD_age = 12.02) were recruited from Amazon's Mechanical Turk. The initial data collection began in April 2020 and continued until April 2023. In total, the data were collected at nine timepoints. Community resilience increased over time, but the rate of increase weakened as the time passed, and PGI skills were relatively stable over time. Regarding the reciprocal relation, there was a significant positive effect of the PGI skillset on subsequent changes in perceived community resilience, but no effect was found predicting subsequent changes in PGI skills by community resilience. The current study highlights the potential application of PGI skills in facilitating subsequent perceived community resilience following a large-scale crisis. Please refer to the Supporting Information section to find this article's Community and Social Impact Statement.