Psychometric Evaluation of the Chinese Version of the Claremont Purpose Scale among Youth

Abstract

Purpose in life is critical to positive development among youth, especially those purposes that focus on an aspect of the world beyond the self. However, existing instruments have not adequately assessed beyond-the-self purpose. The Claremont Purpose Scale addresses the purpose construct, measuring the goal orientation, personal meaningfulness, and beyond-the-self focus among youth in the United States. We developed a version of the scale for use in the Chinese context among youth. In our two-part study, Study 1 developed the preliminary scale, and Study 2 evaluated its validity and reliability. The results indicated this scale is valuable for the assessment of the purpose of Chinese youth, has theoretical and practical implications for the measurement of beyond-the-self purpose, and can contribute to Chinese youth purpose research and future cross-cultural studies.

Acknowledgments

We would like to express our gratitude to all colleagues who assisted in distributing the online questionnaire and all participants for their assistance. We would also like to thank Editage (www.editage.cn) for their English language editing. The data sets generated for this study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Science Fund of Shannxi Province under Grant 2021F008, Education Scientific Planning projects of Shannxi Province under Grant SGH20Q214, Research Foundation from Shaanxi Normal University under Grant GK202003097, and Youth Innovation Team of Shaanxi Universities under Grant 2020084.