Values and Personal Life Investment in Middle-Age: Measures and Relations

Abstract

The present study analyzed the factor structure of Schwartz Value Survey (SVS; 46 items) and the personal life investment (PLI; 10 items) scale, as well as the mutual relations between these two measures. The 50-year-old participants (n = 217–224) were drawn from the ongoing Finnish Jyvaskyla Longitudinal Study of Personal and Social Development. For the SVS, the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) supported the 14-factor structure: achievement, tradition, stimulation, hedonism, security, conformity, power, universalism (with sub-factors of societal concern, tolerance and protecting nature), benevolence (with sub-factors of caring and dependability) and self-direction (with sub-factors of autonomy of action and autonomy of thought). Using these 14 factors, the CFA confirmed the existence of higher-order factors with both two (person-focused and social-focused dimensions) and four factors (self-transcendence, self-enhancement, conservation and openness to change). In assessing personal life investments, three factors emerged using CFA: soul-searching (items of cognition, independence, life reflection and death), basic needs (sexuality, family and work) and pleasure (health, leisure and friends). The three PLI factors and 14 SVS items related to each other in some ways. For example, soul-searching correlated statistically significantly and positively with all three of universalism’s sub-factors (societal concern, tolerance, and protecting nature). Basic needs correlated positively with achievement and benevolence (dependability). Finally, pleasure correlated positively, for example, with benevolence (caring), and hedonism.