Predicting Self-efficacy and Affective Commitment among Interns: The Role of Supervisory Support and Job Challenge

Internships have been used by students from all domains as a way to equip themselves with practical knowledge about their field of work, develop appropriate skills, and understand their own competence with respect to the job. However, the majority of research in I/O Psychology focuses on full-time employees; and even with interns, the research takes more of a career orientation. Thus, we wanted to understand the psychological impact of internships and explore what specific aspects of internships can help build the self-efficacy of interns and increase their affective commitment towards this learning experience. We hypothesized that supervisory support at the internship and the challenge of the work will be significant predictors of self-efficacy and affective commitment in interns. Data collection was carried out online via google forms using the purposive sampling method. The sample comprised of undergraduate-level interns (N = 106, Mage = 20.16) from the fields of commerce, humanities, and social sciences who were studying in various colleges within Mumbai. A multiple regression model was used to analyze the influence of the predictor variables on the outcome variables. Further, differences based on sample demographics were analyzed using independent samples t-tests and single factor ANOVAs. The results revealed that Supervisory Support and Job Challenge, jointly, were significant predictors of both Self-Efficacy and Affective Commitment. These results were then further analyzed in relation to existing literature, along with a discussion of its implications and limitations.