A questionnaire designed to assess roles and goals: a preliminary study

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Clinical Psychology
• Social Psychology

Background:

• Social-cognitive theories suggest depression risk is heightened when a dominant life role or goal is disrupted.
• Life events impacting central personal goals can lead to psychological distress and depressive symptoms.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate an instrument measuring an individual's important roles and goals.
• To test the social-cognitive prediction that overvalued roles/goals correlate with depressive symptomatology.

Main Methods:

• Development of a novel questionnaire to assess important life roles and goals.
• Preliminary data collection from two distinct samples: elderly individuals and younger adults.
• Reliability analysis of the questionnaire and correlational analysis with depressive symptomatology.

Main Results:

• The developed questionnaire demonstrated good overall reliability.
• Preliminary data supported the hypothesis: an overvalued role or goal was more likely to correlate with depressive symptoms.
• Findings were consistent across both elderly and younger adult samples.

Conclusions:

• The new instrument effectively assesses important life roles and goals.
• The study provides empirical support for social-cognitive theories linking role/goal disruption to depression.
• This research highlights the importance of role diversity in mental well-being and depression prevention.