Abstract
Purpose has been defined as an active engagement toward goals that are meaningful to the self (i.e., personal meaningfulness) and contribute to the world beyond the self (BTS). These BTS contributions may reflect the intention to meet a wide range of needs from family financial needs to more macro-level concerns, including social injustices. This study investigates the efficacy of a school-based program called MPOWER expressly designed by the authors to cultivate the BTS aspect of purpose. Previous research suggests that the BTS aspect of purpose has beneficial effects on school engagement, goal-setting abilities and orientations, and ultimately school performance. Ninety-four students participated in this study that utilized a randomized, pre-test-post-test between-subjects design to evaluate MPOWER (52 in MPOWER and 42 in the control group). The ANCOVA results indicated a significant increase in the BTS aspect of purpose among program participants, compared to controls. Moreover, participants had higher post-test levels of general self-efficacy and grade point averages, and decreased performance-approach (e.g., playing to be the best, comparing self to others) and performance-avoidance (e.g., avoiding risks of failure, fear of social consequences) goal orientations. Findings can be used to design programs that aim to cultivate students’ intentions to contribute to the world beyond themselves, as well as associated personal benefits (i.e., goal orientations, self-efficacy, academic performance).
Highlights
Purpose has been defined as a long-term goal or aim that is both personally meaningful and contributes to the world beyond-the-self (Damon, 2009)
The current study examined the effectiveness of the MPOWER program for increasing participants’ BTS aspect of purpose, mastery goal orientation, self-efficacy, and academic achievement
Little’s missing cases at random (MCAR) test (Little, 1988) was conducted to see whether the expectation maximization (EM) algorithm converged; our analysis suggested that our data was MCAR and converged
Summary
Purpose has been defined as a long-term goal or aim that is both personally meaningful and contributes to the world beyond-the-self (Damon, 2009) Within this definition, aims that are pursued solely for the benefit of the self (e.g., I want to make a lot of money) are not as meaningful as aims that benefit the self and greater society (e.g., I want to make a lot of money so that I can help build homes for poor families). Aims that are pursued solely for the benefit of the self (e.g., I want to make a lot of money) are not as meaningful as aims that benefit the self and greater society (e.g., I want to make a lot of money so that I can help build homes for poor families) As it turns out, this beyond-the-self (BTS) intention to do good in the world is beneficial for the doers. As important as having purpose may be for adolescent outcomes, there are few published studies describing and evaluating programs designed to cultivate purpose
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