Validation Of Balanced Time Perspective Scale In Chinese College Students

As a basic dimension of psychological time,time perspective is defined as “the totality of the individual’s view of his psychological future and psychological past existing at a given time”,which helps to provide order and meaning for personal experience.However,existing studies have shown that,compared to a bias to a single time perspective,a multi-dimensional perspective of time is related to more adaptive characteristics.Therefore,the concept of balanced time perspective(BTP)was proposed and gradually attracted the attention of many researchers.From this,Webster developed the Balanced Time Perspective Scale(BTPS)to measure the individual’s balanced time perspective which is defined as a frequent and equal tendency to think about both one’s past and future in positive ways.Through the current subjective evaluation of one’s own past and future,it reflects the individual’s unique time perspective.However,the research and application of the Balanced Time Perspective Scale are concentrated on foreign countries,there is still a gap of research about its application under the Chinese cultural background.As the frontier group and professional talents of new technologies,the college students’ balanced time perspective plays an important role in the development of society.And most of the validity studies of aforementioned scale only use exploratory factor analysis,and lack the results of confirmatory factor analysis.The only confirmatory factor analysis result showed a poor model fit index.Consequently,the applicability and validity of the Balanced Time Perspective Scale requires further verification.In addition,previous studies seldom paid attention directly to the correlation between the balanced time perspective and demographic variables.Therefore,this study revised the Balanced Time Perspective Scale to examine whether the scale is applicable to Chinese college students.And it provides a tool for accurately measuring the balanced time perspective of college students.Besides,the characteristics of the balanced time perspective on demographic-related variables were preliminarily explored.This article contains three studies.Study 1 used the Balanced Time Perspective Scale to measure 500 college students,and used exploratory factor analysis to verify the twofactor structure of the Balanced Time Perspective Scale.The results found that the Balanced Time Perspective Scale contains two dimensions,the past and the future,while the former one contains 13 items,and the latter one contains 14 items.Research2 analyzed the internal consistency reliability,test-retest reliability,construct validity and criterion-related validity of the Balanced Time Perspective Scale(N=722).Results show that the internal consistency coefficient of the subscales and the total scale are both greater than 0.9.Besides,the test-retest reliability results are good: the correlation coefficients between two measurements of each subscale and the total scale at a threeweek interval are greater than 0.7.On the examination of construct validity,confirmatory factor analysis was used to test the BTPS formed in Research 1.The model fitting indicators of the scale all reached the acceptable level(CFI>0.9,TLI>0.9,SRMR<0.08,RMSEA<0.08),which indicate the construct validity is good.Additionally,Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory,Index of Well-Being,Self-Control Scale,and Utrecht Work Engagement Scale-Student were selected as the calibration scale.The results showed that BTPS past subscale is significantly positively correlated with ZTPI past positive subscale,UWES and IWB,and significantly negatively correlated with SCS.The BTPS future subscale is significantly positively correlated with ZTPI future subscale,UWES and IWB,and significantly negatively correlated with SCS.Calculating the Deviation from Balanced Time Perspective(DBTP)by formulas,the results show that DBTP is significantly negatively correlated with UWES and IWB,and significantly positively correlated with SCS.The results show that the correlation between each subscale and the calibration scale conforms to previous studies,which shows that the calibration validity is good.Study 3 examined the relationship between demographic variables and BTP(N=1222).According to previous research,the subjects were divided into four groups of different time perspectives(time expansive,futurists,reminiscers,and time restrictive).Taking time perspective type and gender as independent variables,and the number of people in each category as dependent variables,a chi-square test was performed.It is found that there is a significant interaction between the type of time perspective and gender.The proportion of men who belong to the category of time expansive(42.18%)is significantly higher than that of women(31.71%),that is,compared with women,men are more likely to have balanced time perspective.Taking grade,whether to be an only child,and family location as independent variables,DBTP as dependent variable,and examining the relationship between demographic variables and DBTP.We found that the main effect of grade is significant,and undergraduates have higher DBTP scores than graduate students.The results suggest that compared with undergraduates,graduate students have a more balanced view of time.The main effect of only child and family location on DBTP is not significant.In conclusion,this research discusses the concept of BTP from the perspective of traditional Chinese culture,and points out the different understandings of BTP in Chinese and western cultures.On the other hand,the revised BTPS in this research has good reliability and validity,which provides instrumental support for measuring the BTP of college students,and provides a foundation for the subsequent cultivation of BTP.At the same time,there are many deficiencies in this study.Future research can enhance the balance and representativeness of samples,adopt more objective physiological index data,and explore the concept of BTP from multiple perspectives in combination with the traditional Chinese cultural background.