Meaning-in-life in nursing home patients: a validation study of the Purpose-in-Life test

The experience of meaning has been found to be a strong individual predictor of life satisfaction and an important psychological variable that promotes well-being. Therefore, a valid and reliable measurement of meaning-in-life among nursing home patients is highly warranted.

This study intended to further investigate (a) the factor structure of the Purpose-in-Life test (PIL), (b) the reliability of PIL scores, and (c) the construct validity of the PIL test in a nursing home population.

Participants were 202 cognitively intact nursing home patients representing 44 different Norwegian nursing homes. Concerning the dimensionality of the PIL, the following 3 measurement models were tested using confirmatory factor analysis; the original 1-factor, a 2-factor, and a 3-factor model.

With the exclusion of 10 items, a previously published and supported 2-factor construct for the PIL by Morgan and Farsides (2007) provided a good fit for older nursing home patients, demonstrating good measurement reliability and construct validity.

The 2-factor model by Morgan and Farsides, comprising 10 items, is an improvement over the original 20-items PIL, based on these nursing home data. The measure yielded highly significantly factor loadings, good values for average variance extracted and composite reliability, as well as significant correlations in the expected direction for relevant selected measures; all supporting the construct validity.