![Sample our Behavioral Sciences journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/110801/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Behavioral-Sciences.jpg"})
Abstract
This study explores how youths' own definitions of purpose correspond with the dimensions of Damon, Menon, and Bronk's (Citation2003) definition, and whether youths' definitions form bases for cultures of purpose that encompass youths' content of, confidence in, and integration of their purposes. Four cultures of purpose emerged: Supported, Strivers, Givers, and Disciples. The Supported focused on reasons and meaning for what they could gain from others and were confident in tandem with support received. Strivers aimed for primarily standard career success goals but felt uncertain. Givers felt certain about their aims to help others. Disciples, who tended to provide the most complex definitions, felt certain about their faith-focused purpose to serve God. These cultures of purpose provide insights about how purpose content and coherence function to integrate youths' experiences, and how some cultures may be more likely to provide a foundation for further development of purpose.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This study is based on data also used in Damon (Citation2008), Moran (Citation2009), Moran (Citation2010), Moran et al. (Citation2012), and Malin et al. (Citation2013).
Notes
a Youth-defined emic categories.
b Researcher-defined etic categories.
1Two quadrants of the psychological space in the figure—where epistemic framing and integration are both below the average—did not contain a cluster after the cluster analysis. When youth who gave no definition were included in preliminary analyses not reported here, the majority of them fell into this area. This makes sense because the epistemic framing axis is most influenced by the definitional complexity variable, and the integration axis is a refinement of the epistemic framing axis by furthering distinctions based on pairs of definitional dimensions and complexity that tend to go together.