The Relationship Between Adversity-Linked Purpose in Life and Self-Reported Purpose Trajectories in Urban Middle Schools

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Abstract

Purpose is “a stable and generalized intention to accomplish something that is at once meaningful to the self and of consequence to the world beyond the self” (p. 121, Damon, Menon, & Bronk, 2003). Purpose has been related to several positive aspects of mental health, including increased life satisfaction (Bronk, Hill, Lapsley, Talib, & Finch, 2009) and positive affect (Burrow, O’Dell, & Hill, 2010; Hill, Edmonds, Peterson, Luyckx, & Andrews, 2016) and experiencing less stress (Hill et al., 2016). While purpose has been studied across the lifespan, purpose is thought to be particularly salient for adolescents because of normative changes in brain structure and cognitive skills, including improved executive function, social cognition (Blakemore & Mills, 2014), and empathy (Hoffman, 2000). These emerging abilities to understand the emotional states of others and engage in meta-cognitive reasoning allow adolescents to consider and identify a life purpose.
This study sought to address gaps in the purpose literature by quantitatively modeling purpose among students in the setting of largely low-socioeconomic status, predominately racial/ethnic minority, urban middle schools. Using a Developmental Systems Theory framework, the study investigated the ability of relevant contextual factors, including race, gender, “failing” school status, and mental health, to predict the initial status and change in purpose. In addition, the study sought to understand whether students’ integration of adverse life experiences into their life purpose (in a narrative essay) would be associated with higher levels of self-reported purpose.
Participants were middle school students (n = 2629) attending six low-resourced urban middle schools in the 2015-2016 and 2016-2017 school years. Hierarchical Linear Modeling was used to model purpose and three purpose dimensions over time. Results were unexpected in that purpose was found to decline over the course of the study. While many of the hypothesized predictors were related to the initial status of purpose, few predictors were related to change in purpose over time. A subsample of students was randomly selected from the group of students who had completed purpose essays. Essays were coded for adverse life experiences. Few students described adverse life experiences in their essays, which made it difficult to draw definitive conclusions about the relationships between adverse life experiences and purpose trajectories.
Understanding youth purpose development is a critical priority, particularly in the context of low-resourced urban schools, where the prevalence of adverse life experiences is high. The current study highlights challenges with conceptual clarity and measurement of purpose, difficulty measuring purpose in middle school students, and the mismatch between Developmental Systems Theory and contemporary options for quantitative analysis. In light of these challenges the current study also points to the utility of using a mixed methods approach to better understand purpose development.

Authors

• Danielle Hatchimonji, Rutgers University

• Maurice J. Elias, Rutgers University