Adjustment-seeking behavior: The role of political skill and self-efficacy in training students to be more actively engaged in their studies

Abstract

Some students cope with the conflicting demands of work, family, health, and college by engaging in adjustment-seeking behavior, whereby students try to persuade instructors to make the kinds of personalized adjustments needed to avoid the potential consequences of conflicts between academic responsibilities and their other responsibilities. Hypothesized here is that students’ adjustment-seeking behaviors are predicated by knowledge of students’ political skill and adjustment-seeking self-efficacy. Participants completed a survey measuring adjustment-seeking behavior, adjustment-seeking self-efficacy, and political skill. Multiple regression analysis revealed that students’ political skill and adjustment-seeking self-efficacy contributed significantly to the prediction of adjustment-seeking behavior, as hypothesized. Adjustment-seeking behavior was found to be more frequent among participating students with higher levels of political and self-efficacy skills. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

Keywords

adjustment-seeking behavior college students political skill self-efficacy

Adjustment-seeking behavior falls under the broader umbrella of coping behavior, whereby an individual strives to identify, acquire, and utilize social and material resources to manage and attain personal goals (Greenglass, 2002; Schwarzer, 2000). According to Schwarzer (2000), there are four types of coping: proactive, anticipatory, preventive, and reactive. Both proactive and anticipatory coping behaviors involve preemptive efforts to avoid a stressful situation; anticipatory coping involves preempting an impending problem, whereas proactive coping involves preempting temporally distant problems (such as scheduling conflicts throughout the semester). After experiencing stress, some students turn to reactive and passive coping mechanisms. Students with disappointing grades, for instance, may react by trying to convince the instructor to make a grade change or to be accommodative in some other way. Those students who decide against seeking an adjustment may be following a passive coping plan.

Coping behaviors have been examined and found germane in the contexts of at least school, work, family, and interpersonal relations (Greenglass, 2002). For example, Kadhiravan and Kumar (2012) developed a training module focused on teaching college students to be more effective at using problem-solving, decision-making skills, communication skills, interpersonal skills, and coping skills to cope with stress. The development and use of these skills is among the goals of many effective instructional methods that encourage students to be actively engaged in the learning process and think critically about what they are doing (Bonwell and Eison, 1991; Prince, 2004). Students completing the training module, when compared with an untrained control group, were found to display more effective proactive coping and general self-efficacy skills when coping with stress (Kadhiravan and Kumar, 2012).

Adjustment-seeking behavior helps students to cope with their conflicts. Broken down into its three defining attributes, adjustment-seeking behavior is individualized, involves the exercising of upward influence skills, and calls upon the instructor to exercise legitimate power to address a problem. First, student–instructor interactions are personal and involve one-on-one (rather than group) communication. The student expects to convince the instructor to approve a proposed and favorable resolution to an expressed personal dilemma involving conflicting demands on the student. In the case of the working student with conflicting work and class schedules, for example, the student may try to persuade the instructor to approve submission of assignments via email. In another situation, a single parent may seek approval for late arrivals to class.

Second, adjustment-seeking behavior also involves attempts at upward-bound influence. The student is trying to persuade an authority figure (the instructor) to make a decision favorable to the student. French and Raven (1959) have identified five key sources of the interpersonal power individuals and groups may utilize in efforts to influence other people: reward, coercive, legitimate, referent, and expert. An institution vests instructors with legitimate and reward power. An instructor controls the administration of grades (rewards) and, unfortunately, can exercise coercive power. In addition, by virtue of advanced education and training, instructors possess expert power in the classroom. Student power tends to manifest in the form of influence tactics involving use of rewards, coercion, or referent power. Third, adjustment-seeking behavior calls upon the instructor to exercise legitimate power to address a problem. That is, the student engaged in adjustment-seeking behavior is attempting to persuade an instructor to make a student-specific exception to a course procedure or policy over which the instructor has the legitimate power to make a decision. The instructor’s expert power may have little if any bearing upon the decision.

There is evidence that prior behavior is a good predictor of future behavior (Bentler and Spectart, 1981; Fishbein and Azjen, 2010; Geyer, 2016). There is a positive correlation between adjustment-seeking behavior and adjustment-seeking likelihood (Geyer, 2016). The finding of a significant positive correlation between them lends confidence in the convergent validity of the constructs and suggests that more attention to the topic of adjustment-seeking behavior may be fruitful. Further discourse over student adjustment-seeking behavior would seem to benefit from identification of linkages between adjustment-seeking behavior and theorized proximal antecedents of adjustment-seeking behavior. Keeping in mind that adjustment-seeking behavior, by definition, involves attempts to exert upward influence on an instructor, and that success in doing so would depend on political skill levels along with the confidence to engage in adjustment-seeking behavior, two proximal antecedent variables would be political skill and adjustment-seeking self-efficacy.

Adjustment-seeking behavior and political skill

Political skill has been defined as the ability to understand others at work and to use that knowledge to influence others to act in ways that enhance one’s personal or organizational objectives (Ferris et al., 2005). Political skill is believed to involve at least the combined use of social astuteness, interpersonal influence, networking ability, and apparent sincerity in efforts to influence the decisions and actions of others (Ferris et al., 2005). Socially astute people possess a keen understanding of how the behaviors of others (e.g. coworkers and managers in a workplace setting, or instructors and students in a classroom setting) affect social interactions. People with strong interpersonal influence skills attempt subtle yet effective influence on others, and students would do so in adjustment-seeking efforts. Networking ability refers to the ability to develop relationships with people who can provide a person the kind of positive experiences needed to strengthen his or her influence on others. Finally, the politically skilled person strives to be viewed as being sincere. Being read by an instructor as sincere requires a student to display interpersonal behaviors that build trust and confidence and demonstrate integrity, genuineness, and intentions compatible with mutual goals.

The conceptualization and resultant measurement of political skill emerged in a workplace domain in which individual differences in training, experience, and natural talent for influencing others often are prerequisites for career advancement. However, the classroom offers another setting conducive to practicing and exercising political skill (Geyer, 2014). Unfortunately, students’ political skills remain unstudied with respect to adjustment-seeking behavior, creating a gap in the literature on student behavior. Moreover, political skill has been unstudied for other student behaviors, including compliance-seeking behaviors (Golish, 1999; Golish and Olson, 2000), learned resourcefulness (Rosenbaum, 1990), student nagging behavior (Dunleavy et al., 2008), excuse making (Cayanus et al., 2009; Martin et al., 1999), instructional dissent (Goodboy, 2011), communication with instructors about disappointing grades (Wright, 2013), and students’ success at influencing teachers’ willingness to comply with requests (Mottet et al., 2004). Studies of compliance-seeking behavior, while not focusing on political skills directly, have revealed that the power-based influence tactics used most frequently by college students appear to be persuasion, preparation/logic, flattery, and sincerity (Golish and Olson, 2000). Wright’s (2013) typology of reasons why students do not discuss disappointing grades with instructors offers additional insight into the potential value of examining students’ upward influence skills. Analysis of qualitative data led Wright (2013) to the conclusion that, among other self-set barriers, instructor/relational considerations (legitimate authority, fear of adverse consequences, approachability) were at the root of why some students do not discuss disappointing grades with instructors. Such considerations may also be at the root of students’ decisions to utilize or not utilize political skill in attempts at gaining desired adjustments from instructors.

The broader student behavior literature does suggest that some students may be imposing self-set barriers on themselves. Some students may be intimidated by power differentials. Instructors in many situations hold near unilateral control over course policies and procedures. The instructor sets due dates, attendance policies, and other course rules, and typically does have the discretionary authority to make an adjustment in response to the extenuating circumstances faced by a particular student. The instructor has much more power in the classroom than does the student, creating a potentially intimidating power differential.

Another germane line of research has focused on students’ help-seeking with respect to mental health issues (Rickwood et al., 2005). Help-seeking behavior is typified by the presence of a deficiency such as depression or other mental health disorders requiring help from a professional or, in other situations, by deficiencies requiring tutoring (Williams and Takaku, 2011) or accommodations for physical and mental limitations (Baldridge and Veiga, 2001; Davison et al., 2009). Such deficiencies may be applicable to understanding why some students would decide against seeking an adjustment. In their effort to enhance understanding of help-seeking behavior with respect to students’ mental health, Rickwood et al. (2005) provided a model of the process by which students with mental health problems seek help. This four-stage process begins with self-awareness and proceeds to the more interpersonal realm of expression or articulation of the problem to others, onto the selection of sources of help, before the individual finally makes a choice about disclosing mental health issues to the selected source of help. Perhaps a similar process model would be valid in the context of adjustment-seeking behavior. That is, after selecting the instructor as the target for seeking an adjustment, students may be making a choice about disclosing (or not disclosing) the reason they are seeking an adjustment. Students with weaker political skills may be finding unnecessary reasons not to approach the instructor.

Yet another reason for remaining silent may be that students minimize their own problems. Schwarzer (1992) asserted that self-imposed barriers may dampen adaptation and maintenance of health behaviors. The predisposition to minimize problems is one such barrier to help-seeking (Mansfield et al., 2005; Schwarzer, 1992). Individuals engaged in minimizing problems believe their problems may not be serious enough to warrant seeking help, and instead resign themselves to accepting the consequences of not seeking help. Minimizing problems also may dampen the frequency of students’ adjustment-seeking behavior. Students may experience a sense of resignation with respect to a wide array of personal problems (e.g. work/school scheduling conflicts, illness, and family crises). For instance, a student may not seek an adjustment because, among other reasons, schedule conflicts between class times and work are not perceived to be serious enough to seek a scheduling accommodation from an instructor, and so the student becomes resigned to accepting the consequences (such as a lower grade) of missing class on work days.

Political skill has received no prior attention in the study of adjustment-seeking behavior. In the management literature, a meta-analysis has revealed that politically savvy workers, compared with less savvy workers, have higher levels of career success, organizational citizenship behavior, organizational commitment, personal reputation, self-efficacy, satisfaction, and work productivity, as well as lower levels of physiological strain (Munyon et al., 2014). Students with higher levels of political skill, compared with those with lower levels have been found to have higher levels of general self-efficacy (Geyer, 2014). Generally, the politically skilled person possesses the resourcefulness to succeed in accomplishing goals. When the goal is to gain an adjustment, politically savvy students would be expected to have the confidence to pursue an adjustment and would be less likely to bend to fears of intimidation, retaliation, and power differentials that may cause those with weaker political skill to set self-imposed barriers. Such self-imposed barriers may lead the student with weaker political skill to decide not to pursue an adjustment. For these reasons, a significant positive correlation between these two variables would be expected. Hence,

Hypothesis 1. A significant and positive bivariate correlation between political skill and adjustment-seeking behavior will be observed.

Adjustment-seeking behavior and adjustment-seeking self-efficacy

Bandura (1986, 1997) defined self-efficacy as a self-judgment of one’s ability to perform a task within a specific domain. High levels (low levels) of self-efficacy in one behavioral domain may not manifest as high (low) efficacy in another. Hence, Bandura (1986) asserted that domain-specific concepts and measures should be developed and utilized in the study of each particular behavioral domain. Here, task-specific self-efficacy is defined as a student’s belief in his or her ability to receive an adjustment from a college instructor for a personal problem, hereafter labeled adjustment-seeking self-efficacy.

Task-specific measures of self-efficacy have proven to be valid in explaining individual differences in behaviors ranging from academic success to tobacco cessation (e.g. Hergenrather et al., 2008; Lenz, 2008; Schwarzer and Fuchs, 1995; Zajcova et al., 2005). Schwarzer’s (2008); health action process approach (HAPA) to modeling health maintenance behavior has treated self-efficacy (along with coping planning) as a proximal cause of health maintenance behaviors. Schwarzer (2008) views general and task-specific self-efficacy as ever more proximal than behavioral intentions to targeted behaviors, and argues that self-efficacy acts to bridge the gap between intentions and behavior. Similar to Bandura (1986, 1997), Schwarzer (2008) asserts that the process by which the various forms of task-specific self-efficacy relate to the corresponding target behavior may be understood as volitional and goal-oriented. Viewing adjustment-seeking behavior through the lenses of Schwarzer’s (2008) HAPA model and Bandura’s (1986) self-efficacy theory, the student concentrating on requesting an adjustment has recognized an existing or anticipated goal discrepancy, such as a real or potential conflict between attaining academic goals and meeting work, family, and health maintenance goals. His or her tendency to draw on this internalized motivation in efforts to avoid or avert such a discrepancy (whether tangible or anticipated) would depend on his or her perceived ability to accomplish a goal, such as succeeding when seeking an adjustment.

Many have found task-related measures of self-efficacy to be important to understanding differences in student behaviors (e.g. Akgun and Ciarrochi, 2003; Chemers et al., 2001; Lane et al., 2004; Pintrich, 1999; Richardson et al., 2012). A meta-analysis summarizing the results of numerous studies found the correlation between self-efficacy and grade point average (GPA) to be of moderate size (Richardson et al., 2012). Although no research has examined the relationship between adjustment-seeking self-efficacy and adjustment-seeking behavior, the body of theory and research suggests that a significant positive correlation would be expected. Students with higher (lower) levels of adjustment-seeking self-efficacy would feel more (less) confident in their ability to gain an adjustment from their instructor, and so would be more (less) likely to try to do so. Hence,

Hypothesis 2. A significant and positive bivariate correlation between adjustment-seeking self-efficacy and adjustment-seeking behavior will be observed.

Political skill and adjustment-seeking self-efficacy

Political skill and adjustment-seeking self-efficacy are likely to covary. Both concepts are volitional and goal-oriented (Bandura, 1986, 1997; Ferris et al., 2005) and both relate to interpersonal interactions. Geyer (2014) found a significant and positive relationship between general self-efficacy among undergraduate college students and each of four dimensions of political skill (social astuteness, interpersonal influence, networking ability, and apparent sincerity). With this evidence in mind, it seems reasonable to expect that students with higher (lower) levels of political skill will tend to report higher (lower) levels of adjustment-seeking self-efficacy. Hence,

Hypothesis 3. A significant bivariate correlation between political skill and adjustment-seeking self-efficacy will be observed.

Model of adjustment-seeking behavior

How strongly do students’ political skill and adjustment-seeking self-efficacy contribute to the prediction of adjustment-seeking behavior? Without ruling out the possibility of other antecedent variables, political skill and adjustment-seeking self-efficacy were viewed here as proximal and (theoretically) causal antecedents of adjustment-seeking behavior. Changes in students’ levels of political skill and adjustment-seeking behavior, considered both individually (per Hypotheses 1 and 2) and jointly would be expected to produce changes in students’ adjustment-seeking behavior. Hence,

Hypothesis 4. Significant joint and independent effects of political skill and adjustment-seeking self-efficacy on adjustment-seeking behavior will be observed.

Method

Subjects

The participants were 229 students from diverse disciplines (nursing and other health administration programs, information technology (IT), culinary arts, general education) enrolled full-time at a university in Northern Florida in the fall term of 2014 (70% female; 46% working full-time and 24% working part-time; 42% African American, 8% Hispanic American, 41% Caucasian American, and 9% other ethnic groups; 40% aged 18–24 years, 38% aged 25–34 years, and 22% aged 35 years or older; 59% associate degree status, 41% bachelor’s/graduate degree status; 46% with grade point averages exceeding 3.5, 31% ranging from 3.0 to 3.5, and 23% below 3.0). Students were escorted by instructors to the institution’s library at prearranged times to assure availability of computers. The lead researcher announced the purposes of the research, risks, and the conditions of voluntary participation with options to withdraw at any time (as did the opening statement on the Surveymonkey.com survey, per signed institutional review board approval), and time was provided to open the website links to the survey and respond to survey questions.

Measures

Adjustment-seeking behavior

Following Geyer (2016), to measure the frequency of adjustment-seeking behavior, the first step was to ask the student to “recall important personal situations in the past three months about which you sought an adjustment from your instructor (such as adjusting attendance, due dates, testing times and duration, or other course requirements).” Next, participants were asked to report how many times they had approached their instructor for these situations: work conflicting with class times, family commitments conflicting with classwork, and temporary health matters interfering with classwork. An index of the frequency of a student engaging in any of the three situations was then created with a scale ranging from 0 to 3 or more: 0 = students who did not engage in adjustment-seeking behavior for any of the situations, 1 = students requesting an adjustment for any one of the situations, 2 = students requesting an adjustment for any two of the situations, and 3 = students requesting an adjustment for more than two of the situations.

Adjustment-seeking self-efficacy

Seven items assessing adjustment-seeking self-efficacy were created, including the following two examples: “I am confident that I would be successful at talking an instructor into adjusting a course requirement.” “I know how to convince an instructor to adjust course requirements even if the adjustment is for a personal matter.” Response options ranged from 0 (not at all confident) to 4 (very confident), and responses were averaged to build a composite score ranging from 0 to 4. Results of exploratory factor analyses reaffirmed the assumption of unidimensionality: The seven-item adjustment-seeking self-efficacy scale held one underlying factor with an eigenvalue in excess of 1 (observed eigenvalue of 4.3 accounting for 68% of the variance, with extracted communalities ranging from 0.61 to 0.79 for the seven items).

Political skill

The 18-item Political Skill Inventory (Ferris et al., 2005) served as the measure of political skill. Following Geyer (2014), any reference to work was removed to create a context-free measure of political skill. The assumption behind use of a context-free measure is that political skill is useful in pursuing a broad array of either work-related or non-work-related goals. To create context-free items, the words “at work” were cut from six items, including the following item: “I spend a lot of time and effort [at work] networking with others.” Other (unmodified) items included, “I always seem to instinctively know the right things to say and do to influence others. I am able to make most people feel comfortable and at ease around me.” The response options ranged from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). Responses to the 18 items were averaged to create a scale score ranging from 1 to 7. Ample evidence of the reliability and validity of this measure is available (Ferris et al., 2007).

Data analysis

Data were summarized using standard descriptive methods: frequency counts, means, and standard deviations. Coefficient alpha estimates were calculated to assess internal consistency. Exploratory factor analyses were performed to confirm dimensions. Pearson product–moment correlation coefficients were calculated to assess the strengths of bivariate relations. Multivariate regression analysis served to test the combined effects of political skill and adjustment-seeking self-efficacy on adjustment-seeking behavior.

Results

When asked how frequently a request for an adjustment had been made over the three classes, for the 229 participants, the following frequency results were observed: no requests, 40%; one request, 14%; two requests, 18%; and three or more requests, 28%. Put differently, 6 students out of every 10 (60%, n = 137) reported having engaged in accommodation-seeking behavior at least once over a 3-month period of studies. Such individual differences are a prerequisite for the multivariate analysis described below. The relatively high proportion of students in the “no requests” category (40%, n = 92) speaks to the need to consider why so many students opt to not seek adjustments.

Table 1 presents summary statistics (means, standard deviations, and coefficient alpha estimates of internal consistency) and Pearson product–moment bivariate correlation coefficients. The estimates of internal consistency of 0.84 for adjustment-seeking self-efficacy and 0.94 for Political Skill are relatively high, and lend confidence in utilizing scores on these two scales for the purpose of testing the hypotheses. The bivariate correlations provide a means to judge the validity of Hypotheses 1, 2, and 3. To recap, these were that there would be a significant and positive bivariate correlation between political skill and adjustment-seeking behavior, a significant and positive bivariate correlation between adjustment-seeking self-efficacy and adjustment-seeking behavior, and a significant and positive bivariate correlation between political skill and adjustment-seeking self-efficacy.

Table 1.

Means (Ms), standard deviations (SDs), correlations, and coefficient alpha estimates of internal consistency (N = 229).

Variables	M	SD	1	2	3
Political skill	3.4	1.14	(0.94)
A-S S-E	1.4	1.01	0.29**	(0.84)
A-S behavior	1.1	0.89	0.38**	0.43**	—

Notes: A-S S-E = adjustment-seeking self-efficacy; A-S behavior = adjustment-seeking behavior. Coefficient alpha estimates are reported on the diagonal.

Indicates significance at ρ < 0.01.

Significant and positive correlations between adjustment-seeking behavior and political skill (r = 0.38; ρ < 0.01) and adjustment-seeking self-efficacy (r = 0.34; ρ < 0.01) were observed, supporting Hypotheses 1 and 2, respectively. That is, there was a significant and positive correlation between political skill and adjustment-seeking behavior, and also for that between adjustment-seeking self-efficacy and adjustment-seeking behavior. Also, a significant and positive correlation between political skill and adjustment-seeking self-efficacy (r = 0.29; ρ < 0.01) was observed, supporting Hypothesis 3.

The moderate size of the correlation between adjustment-seeking behavior and political skill (r = 0.38) does suggest that students with higher levels of political skill are more likely to seek adjustments than those with lower levels. Nevertheless, the relatively high number of students who indicated that they made no requests (40%) raises a post hoc research question, “How often did students with relatively high levels of political skill make the rational and planned decision to not seek an adjustment?” The politically savvy student may have the requisite skill to convince an instructor to make an adjustment, but may make a potentially savvy decision to not do so under some conditions (e.g. the student may want to reserve the use of his or her influence skills for later, perhaps when the outcome is more important). The answer to this question may provide input to efforts to identify the reasons why students impose self-set barriers on themselves. To address this question, the political skill scores for a subgroup of students with political skill scores above the statistical mean were examined to determine how many had submitted no requests. Of the 114 students with above average political skill scores, 20 (17%) had reported making no requests for adjustments. Although many alternative explanations must be considered, given that these 20 students had relatively high levels of political skill, it seems plausible that they did make a reasoned and savvy decision, rather than holding themselves back by self-imposing barriers (such as fear of adverse consequences).

A multiple regression procedure involving regression of adjustment-seeking behavior onto political skill and adjustment-seeking self-efficacy was conducted (see Table 2) to test Hypothesis 4, that is, that there are significant joint and independent effects of political skill and adjustment-seeking self-efficacy on adjustment-seeking behavior. Both political skill and adjustment-seeking self-efficacy made statistically significant, independent contributions to explained variance in adjustment-seeking behavior, and jointly explained a total of 37% of the variance in adjustment-seeking behavior (R² = 0.37; ρ < 0.01). This pattern of results is consistent with the hypothesis that political skill and adjustment-seeking self-efficacy will contribute significantly to explained variance in adjustment-seeking behavior. These two constructs seem to form a parsimonious model of adjustment-seeking behavior.

Table 2.

Multiple regression analysis using political skill and adjustment-seeking self-efficacy to predict adjustment-seeking behavior (N = 229).

Standardized coefficients
Political skill	0.24**
Adjustment-seeking self-efficacy	0.28**
R² df (2, 226)	0.37**
F(overall)	31.27**

ρ < 0.01.

Discussion

The focus here has been on adjustment-seeking involving informal student/faculty interactions. However, there are other models/ways of getting adjustments, depending on the institution and/or country (such processes vary either from institution to institution or from country to country). For example, it is standard in some countries to ensure that the student submits a request to some kind of centralized panel or committee, which considers and makes decisions about such things, that is, one that does not involve the faculty member/marker of the work under consideration by the student who has asked for an adjustment. Some students engage in adjustment-seeking behavior as a means to cope with the conflicting demands of work, family, health, and school (Geyer, 2016). A total of 60% of the students participating in this study reported having engaged in adjustment-seeking behavior. In an effort to explain individual differences in adjustment-seeking behavior, four hypotheses were posed. Hypotheses 1 and 2 specified the expectation of finding significant positive correlations between adjustment-seeking behavior and political skill (Hypothesis 1) and adjustment-seeking behavior and adjustment-seeking self-efficacy (Hypothesis 2). The third hypothesis specified the expectation that the correlation between political skill and adjustment-seeking behavior would be significant and positive. Hypothesis 4 stated that political skill and adjustment-seeking self-efficacy would contribute significantly (individually and jointly) to explained variance in adjustment-seeking behavior. All four hypotheses were supported. Considering Hypothesis 4, in particular, individual differences in the adjustment-seeking behavior of participating college students were found to be explainable by variations in levels of political skill and adjustment-seeking self-efficacy. These findings shed light on why some students do engage in adjustment-seeking behavior more often than do other students.

It seems reasonable to conclude now that students’ self-awareness of their own political skill and adjustment-seeking self-efficacy levels, at least for those in this study, would enable them to draw inferences about the likelihood of gaining a positive outcome by initiating adjustment-seeking behavior. For instance, astute students may trust in their political skill enough to initiate influence attempts without concerns of retaliation, and less astute students may impose barriers on themselves, precluding attempts at adjustment seeking.

Political skill and self-efficacy form a very parsimonious yet robust model of the antecedents of adjustment-seeking behavior. This model of adjustment-seeking behavior may be expanded for the purposes of additional research and practical applications by measuring the antecedents of political skill and self-efficacy. Antecedents of political skill have been proffered as perceptiveness, control, affability, active influence, and development experiences (Ferris et al., 2007). Antecedents of self-efficacy include performance accomplishments (e.g. prior experience), vicarious experience (e.g. modeling of others), social persuasion (such as coaching and performance feedback), and physiological and emotional states (Bandura, 1997). Development of training models focused on teaching and practicing the antecedents of political skill and self-efficacy may prove to be very useful in growing the political skill and self-efficacy of students as a means to then increase the frequency of engagement in adjustment-seeking behavior, and perhaps other student behaviors.

Thinking more broadly about the higher education field and active learning, improvements in political skill and self-efficacy levels may serve to improve the effectiveness of active learning strategies and exercises. Especially with respect to group activities, the politically savvy student may be in a better position to influence peers and, if so, then may become more resourceful at completing tasks. Similarly, the highly efficacious student may be in a better state of mind for completing tasks.

Some students chose to not engage in adjustment-seeking behavior. In all, 40% of participating students reported not having engaged in adjustment-seeking behavior within the prior 3 months. These students in general were less politically skilled and felt lower self-efficacy than those who reported having engaged in adjustment-seeking behavior. The results of this study do reveal that students’ decisions to not engage in adjustment-seeking behavior are most likely being made by those students with relatively low levels of political skill and self-efficacy. As is true in many correlational studies, room exists for improving predictions and accounting for additional variation in dependent variables. For example, some of the students who opted not to engage in adjustment-seeking behavior may have been rather politically astute and confident, and so may have been reserving influence attempts for ever more important situations, or may have been accepting the risk of a lower grade as part of an overall time management plan. Other students may not have experienced any conflicts, and so had no reason to initiate adjustment-seeking behavior. Given the general pattern observed here, however, consideration of plausible self-imposed barriers to adjustment seeking would seem to be judicious.

A post hoc analysis found that 20 (14%) of the participating students with above average levels of political skill indeed did opt against engaging in adjustment-seeking behavior. It is up to future research to determine why they did so. Among the explanations might be that they did not have a need to engage in adjustment-seeking behavior or they decided to delay requests for more opportune situations and none occurred. Such reasoning would suggest that these students made rational decisions and may not have set such self-imposed barriers as fear of power differentials in general or retaliation in particular.

Self-imposed barriers are being proposed in response to findings in various domains that study participants are not taking advantage of available resources. A frustrating number of students and employees have chosen not to request accommodations for disabilities even when qualified to do so (Baldridge and Veiga, 2001; Davison et al., 2009); the same could be said of patients with mental health problems who choose not to engage in help-seeking behavior (Mansfield et al., 2005; Schwarzer, 1992). In addition, too many students fail to discuss disappointing grades with instructors (Wright, 2013). As a case in point, fear of adverse circumstances was among the variety of barriers nominated by Wright (2013) to explain why some students in the study did not discuss disappointing grades with instructors.

Self-set barriers may be valid in explaining why some students do not take advantage of resources available to them. Remedies for self-set barriers tend to be based on the assumption that corrective actions are needed to help students break down their self-imposed barriers and free them to talk with instructors. However, not all students have made decisions based on correctable self-set barriers. Rather, their decisions may be skill-based, as when the politically savvy students have made decisions against seeking an adjustment. Attention to skill-based reasons for not taking advantage of available resources may be fruitful. It may be that some politically savvy students consider the decision to not engage in behaviors (like discussing disappointing grades or adjustment-seeking behavior) to be consistent with their goals. In other words, although self-set barriers may be among the reasons for not engaging in adjustment-seeking behavior (a rather dark view of decision making), political skills and other skills also warrant consideration (offering a rather optimistic perspective). Unlike self-imposed barriers needing to be broken down, political skills need to be grown.

The study of adjustment-seeking behavior is young. A variety of methodological, empirical, and practical research questions need to be addressed in the future. Undergraduate, land-based students from one institution in the United States participated in this study. Because differing conclusions may have been drawn from other samples, additional research is needed and planned with a focus on more diverse samples (e.g. students in graduate school, from other institutions and countries, attending online or hybrid classes, or attending school with disabilities). People in diverse settings, not just in the classroom, try to exert their influence on others. A priority for the future is to determine if the study hypotheses would be confirmed in other settings such as employee training and education programs. It remains to be seen, in particular, whether students’ decisions to request (or not request) an adjustment from an instructor involve the same sequence of steps students consider when seeking help for mental health issues, including awareness of a problem (or a perceived problem), how to articulate the problem to an instructor, and then a willingness to disclose a personal matter to the instructor (Rickwood et al., 2005). Commonality in such behaviors may allow interdisciplinary research and training efforts to be more fruitful.

Variations in how variables are measured may lend evidence of validity to future findings. Students’ self-reports of adjustment-seeking behavior covering periods of time shorter or longer than the 3-month period covered here will add more information on the subject. Of keen interest will be findings from reports made by instructors (rather than students) as to the frequency and nature of adjustment-seeking behaviors by their students. In addition, priority should be given to a search for additional antecedent variables. Learned resourcefulness (Kennett et al., 2013; Kennett and Keefer, 2006) and proactive coping (Schwarzer, 2000) may have promise here. The reader is advised not to view the study findings, on their own and apart from theories, as indicative of causality given the correlational rather than experimental design utilized here.

Adjustment-seeking behaviors, when successful, may enable students to manage the conflicts between academic expectations and commitments to work, family, and personal health. Found here is that many students do engage in adjustment-seeking behavior but too many do not. Both political skill and adjustment-seeking self-efficacy were found to be important antecedent variables. These results may be important to future efforts to predict adjustment-seeking behavior, and have the potential to guide efforts to increase the frequency of adjustment-seeking behavior.

It would be nice if the “darker” side of student/instructor relations (fears of coercion and manipulation) could be minimized and the “brighter” side (use of skills) encouraged. And it would be nice if more students felt confident in seeking adjustments rather than avoiding doing so. Increased instructor/student interactions may pose added challenges for instructors, but perhaps those challenges would be like the problem of paying higher taxes—paying higher taxes means more money has been earned. Likewise, increased decision making in response to adjustment-seeking behavior means more student/instructor interactions are taking place. Paying more in taxes and increased student/instructor interactions would both seem to be rather attractive goals.

Footnotes

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author biography

Paul D Geyer retired from a position as Research Associate Professor of Rehabilitation Counseling and Education at the University of Arkansas. His retirement interests include teaching in the areas of psychology and management and conducting research on human behavior in work and school settings. Address: Keiser University, 1697 Copperfield Cir, Tallahassee, FL 32312, USA. [email: geyerpd@comcast.net]

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