Exploratory and Confirmatory Factor Analysis: Developing the Purpose in Life test-Short Form (PIL-SF)
Erin Michelle Buchanan, K. D. Valentine, Stefan E. Schulenberg · 2014
This article discusses the development of a short form of the Purpose in Life test (PIL) by using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. We describe why the creation of a useful, separate scale for measuring only meaning in life was desirable. The analyses used here, while normally complex, are broken down into manageable research questions that will show you how to interpret factor analyses and use these results in future endeavors. We first analyzed the original, 20-item version of the Purpose in Life test to determine which items would be the most beneficial at assessing meaning. Those items were examined in a second set of studies to analyze reliability of the proposed short form, which was revealed to be a handy tool for evaluating a person’s perceived meaning in life. Meaning (or lack thereof) is an important concept, which is related to positive and negative variables, such as happiness, life satisfaction, depression, and drug use. You will learn about the challenges and advantages to using factor analysis, and why it is an essential statistical procedure for researchers who are interested in scale development, validation, and refinement. This article is an extension of material originally presented by Schulenberg, Buchanan, and colleagues. Contributor biographies Erin M. Buchanan is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Missouri State University. She has an undergraduate degree in psychology from Texas A&M University, and her master’s degree and Ph.D. from Texas Tech University. Her research specialties include applied statistics with a focus on scale development and validation, as well as research on new statistical procedures and their implementation in the social sciences. She mainly teaches undergraduate and graduate statistics courses that cover the whole range of types of statistics, including structural equation modeling. Finally, she also is interested in understanding the underlying structure of our language systems and how those systems interaction with our ability to make judgments about the relationships between words. Kathrene D. Valentine is currently an Adjunct Instructor at Missouri State University. She has an undergraduate degree in psychology and a master’s degree in experimental psychology from Missouri State University. Her research interests include the importance of properly applied statistics in the social sciences with an emphasis on non-null hypothesis significance testing techniques, power and effect size, replication, and new statistical technologies. She teaches undergraduate introductory statistics courses. Stefan E. Schulenberg (Ph.D., Clinical Psychology-Clinical/Disaster Specialty Track, University of South Dakota, 2001) is a licensed psychologist in the state of Mississippi and an Associate Professor in the University of Mississippi’s Psychology Department. Dr. Schulenberg teaches graduate courses in cognitive assessment, personality assessment, and disaster mental health, as well as undergraduate courses in disasters and mental health, positive psychology, psychology and law, abnormal psychology, and tests and measurements. His research interests include clinical-disaster psychology, meaning and purpose in life, positive psychology, psychological assessment, serious mental illness, and adolescent psychopathology in the legal context. Dr. Schulenberg co-organizes Out of the Darkness community walks with the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and serves as a disaster mental health volunteer in the American Red Cross. He was a mental health consultant for a research grant issued in response to Hurricane Katrina, and recently conducted evaluation research funded by the Mississippi Department of Mental Health relating to the effects of the Gulf Oil Spill. Dr. Schulenberg also serves as the Director of the University of Mississippi’s Clinical-Disaster Research Center (UM-CDRC), an integrated research, teaching, training, and service Center with a primary emphasis in disaster mental health and a related emphasis in positive psychology. Relevant disciplines