Development and Validation of the Youth Purpose Orientation Scale Among Chinese Sample

INTRODUCTION: Purpose orientation has an important impact on the development of adolescence. An effective instrument is needed to describe the purpose orientation of youth. The aim of this research is to develop a reliable and valid scale to measure life purpose orientations of youth. METHODS: Study 1 established a preliminary pool of items based on a literature review, an open-form questionnaire, and some expert opinions. Study 2 used exploratory factor analysis and performed internal consistency and reliability tests. The sample consisted of 442 young Chinese students, divided into males (49.3%) and females (50.7%) with an age range of 13 to 22 years. Study 3 performed confirmatory factor analysis and tested the scale’s calibration validity and test-retest reliability. The confirmatory sample comprised 91,635 young Chinese students, divided into males (43.2%) and females (56.5%) with an age range of 12 to 23 years. The calibration validity sample consisted of 572 participants, aged 12 to 22. The test-retest reliability sample consisted of 200 participants. RESULTS: Through exploratory factor analysis, the four-factor structure revealed contains personal growth, social promotion, family well-being, and personal well-being purpose orientations. This four factor-structure revealed a 65.26% cumulative variance. The four factors’ alpha reliability was 0.89 for personal growth, 0.87 for social promotion, 0.86 for family well-being, and 0.87 for personal well-being, respectively. Confirmatory factor analysis showed that the model fitting index had a good four-factor structure. The calibration validity and test-retest reliability were acceptable. CONCLUSION: These findings demonstrated that the 19-item findings demonstrated that the Youth Purpose Orientation Scale is a valid and reliable measure. In future research, it can be used to measure purpose orientation in youth.