Department of Medical Social Sciences, Northwestern University.
Department of Developmental Psychology, Tilburg University.
Dev Psychol. 2024 Jan;60(1):75-93. doi: 10.1037/dev0001633. Epub 2023 Sep 28.
Despite the value of sense of purpose during older adulthood, this construct often declines with age. With some older adults reconsidering the relevance of purpose later in life, the measurement of purpose may suffer from variance issues with age. The current study investigated whether sense of purpose functions similarly across ages and evaluated if the predictive power of purpose on mental, physical, cognitive, and financial outcomes changes when accounting for a less age-affected measurement structure. Utilizing data from two nationwide panel studies (Health and Retirement Study: = 14,481; Midlife in the United States: = 4,030), the current study conducted local structural equation modeling and found two factors for the positively and negatively valenced purpose items in the Purpose in Life subscale (Ryff, 1989), deemed the purposeful and purposeless factor. These factors become less associated with each other at higher ages. When reproducing past findings with this two-factor structure, the current study found that the purposeful and purposeless factors predicted these outcomes in the same direction as would be suggested by past research, but the magnitude of these effects differed for some outcomes. The discussion focuses on the implications of what this means for our understanding of sense of purpose across the lifespan. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).
尽管目的感在老年期具有重要价值，但随着年龄的增长，这种感觉往往会下降。一些老年人在晚年重新审视目的的相关性，因此目的的衡量可能会受到年龄差异的影响。本研究调查了目的感在不同年龄段是否具有相同的作用，并评估了在考虑到受年龄影响较小的测量结构时，目的对心理、身体、认知和财务结果的预测能力是否会发生变化。本研究利用来自两个全国性面板研究（健康与退休研究：n=14481；美国中年研究：n=4030）的数据，进行了局部结构方程建模，发现目的生活量表（Ryff, 1989）中积极和消极目的项目有两个因素，分别为有目的和无目的因素。这些因素在较高年龄时彼此之间的相关性降低。当用这种两因素结构再现过去的发现时，本研究发现有目的和无目的因素以与过去研究建议一致的方向预测这些结果，但这些效应的大小在某些结果上有所不同。讨论的重点是这对我们理解整个生命周期的目的感意味着什么。（PsycInfo 数据库记录（c）2024 APA，保留所有权利）。
