A Study Of Purpose In Life Function On Positive Youth Development Of Senior High School Stuent

Purpose in life refers to 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, that organizes and stimulates goals, manages behaviors, and provides a sense of meaning. The evidence of existing studies from different perspective revealed that purpose in life promote youth development. But mostly contributed to the positive development is single adaptive consequences, have no systematic investigation to so many positive qualities. Furthermore, the existing measure tool of purpose in life is based on the former theory, not along with the development of purpose. So this study is to developed the measuring tool which more fit with the present theory of purpose, examining the positive development indicator which more systematic more comprehensive. If purpose in life can promote the positive youth development, So how does this effect work? Can purpose in life impact the positive experience of activities and further impact postive development? We assume that there might be such a mechanism: The youth which have clearly purpose, they can get more positive experience in their activities, these positive experience further shaped their positive development.In order to examine the above hypothesis, First, this study has drawn up the Senior High School Student Purpose in Life Questionnaire, contains two questionnaires :Sense of Purpose Questionnaire which have 24 items and Beyond the Self Questionnaire have 12 items. Study participants are 602 students from 11 th grade in Xiamen,Fujian Province. The result of the confirmatory factor analysis indicated that the formal questionnaire was acceptable.Secondly, methods by using cross-sectional study, examine purpose’s prediction function on positive youth development, and positive activity exerperice’s mediating effect between purpose and positive youth development. Through self-compiling Senior High School Student Purpose in Life Questionnaire to measure purpose; revising the Youth Activity Survey Questionnaire to measure positive activity exerperice; Positve Youth Development Questionnaire to measure positve youth development. Study participants are 239 students from 11 th grade in Xiamen, Fujian Province. The study findings are as follows:(1) Self-compiled Senior High School Student Purpose in Life Questionnaire contains two questionnaires :Sense of Purpose Questionnaire and Beyond the Self Questionnaire, has good reliability and validity, various indicators accord with psychometrics.The questionnaire can be an useful tool for measure purpose in life of senior high school student.(2)Sense of purpose of Senior high school student in the above average level, beyond the self orientation is not obvious.There are sex differenees in the sense of purpose in senior high school students.The sense of purpose of female is higher than the sense of purpose of male.(3) Positive activities exerperice plays as mediating role in purpose predicting positve youth development, which means purpose predict positve youth development partly through positive activity exerperice.As we know, the adolescents who think highly of the purpose, will get more positive activity exerperice, and thus will show greater level of positve youth development. Educaters should notice that in the process of character education, on the one hand, strengthen the purpose education, on the other hand,enhanced positive activties experience;develop the program of ideal and faith which suitable for adolescents in our country; cultivate clearly purpose, establish positived environment or resource, on this account shaped their positive development.This study is a positive role in the development of the purpose in life study provides empirical evidence in the Chinese context. At the same time, it expand the role of activities experience to positive youth development, found that not only positive activities experience shaped adolescents, adolescents have different purpose will choose different experiences, which verifies the promotion of positive youth development driving force source.