Conceptualisation, measurement, and prediction of foreign language learning psychological capital among Chinese EFL students

Psychological capital (PsyCap), the resource that responds to developing an individual’s positive psychological capacities, is positively related to academic behaviours, achievement emotions, and academic resource. However, the domain-specificity of the PsyCap scale and the prediction of PsyCap resources have not been examined in an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) context, especially in China. This study aims to conceptualise EFL PsyCap, develops its corresponding measurement, and explore how EFL PsyCap resources were associated with EFL-related achievement emotions, academic engagement, and EFL performance. Item-level analyses, internal consistency analyses, and confirmatory factor analyses were conducted to assess the reliability and validity of the EFL PsyCap scale in a sample of 1,396 Chinese EFL learners. Furthermore, structural equation modelling analyses were conducted to examine the relationship between EFL PsyCap resources, achievement emotions, academic engagement, and EFL performance after controlling for gender and age. Results showed that the 16-item EFL PsyCap scale retains excellent psychometric properties and EFL PsyCap is a hierarchical construct underpinned by its four first-order components of optimism, hope, resilience, and self-efficacy. Additionally, EFL PsyCap resources positively predicted academic enjoyment, behavioural engagement, and EFL performance and negatively predicted academic boredom and anxiety.