Student perceptions of internship experience: does work stress and workplace bullying decreases personal development

Abstract

Internship is critical as it allows hands-on experience for what they have learned in classroom in real settings. It meant to test their career interests and acts as a personal development opportunity. However, little is known about the work environment they were in, as well as their internship experience had on their personal development. In this paper, we present a descriptive analysis from a survey where the responses were collected from 104 students who had underwent a 16 weeks paid internship. The purpose is to assess the work environment factors especially the amount work stress and workplace bullying they have had experience. Later we conducted an inferential analysis to determine the effect of work stress and workplace bullying have on their personal development. The outcomes from this study have the potential to bridge the expectation-reality gap on the career that they will be joining, to strengthen the bonds between university-industry and to fill the internship literature gap on personal development.

Keywords

• internship
• work stress
• workplace bullying
• personal development