Identity Development as a Mediator of General Life Purpose and Perceived Well-Being Among University Students Shelby Stone, Dr. Cindy Miller-Perrin, & Dr. Don Thompson Pepperdine University Methods Participants: A randomly selected sample of 218 male (35%) and female (65%) college students, who were part of a large longitudinal study on college student development, served as participants. Participants were enrolled in a private, Christian, liberal arts university in southern California. The majority of the sample was Caucasian between 20 to 22 years of age (M = 20.90). Measures: General Life Purpose Scale (GLP) is an 18-item scale that assesses general sense of life purpose, operationalized as attempts to pursue one’s life goals, based on Emmons’ (2005) reasoning that life purpose is expressed through goals. Extended Objective Measure of Ego-Identity Status (EOMEIS-2 (Revision)) is a 32-item scale that evaluates identity status based on four scales: achievement, diffusion, moratorium, and foreclosure (Adams, 1998). Perceived Wellness Scale (PWS) is a 36-item questionnaire designed to assess an individual’s self perceptions of well-being (Adams, 1995). The scale assesses six dimensions of perceived well-being including psychological, emotional, social, physical, spiritual, and intellectual. Summing responses from all of the items yields a total composite score. Procedure: Participants completed the measures online. The survey required approximately 60 minutes to complete and on completion of the survey, participants received one hour of convocation credit. Introduction  Life Purpose and Well-Being: According to previous research, life purpose is related to well-being (Thoits, 2012). As life purpose gives people a sense of direction, it seems that this sense of meaning contributes to a person’s overall perceived well-being.  Mediators: Some research has looked into what factors may mediate the relationship between life purpose and perceived well-being, such as Adams, Besner, Drabbs, Zambarano, and Steinhardt (2000), who discovered that life purpose, when mediated by optimism and self- coherence, impacts perceived well-being.  Life Purpose and Identity Development: Other areas of research suggest that student who have developed a solid concept of identity are more likely to have a secure concept of vocation, life purpose, and the reverse is also true (Feenstra & Brouwer, 2008).  Current Study: As students develop a personal identity, especially through determination of life purpose, students may help contribute to a more positive and rounded well-being. Therefore, this study seeks to investigate the hypothesis that college students with a better sense of life purpose develop a solid concept of identity, resulting in a more rounded perception of well-being. References Adams, G. R. (1998). The Objective Measure of Ego Identity Status: A reference manual (pp. 1–90). Adams, T.B. (1995). The conceptualization and measurement of wellness (Doctoral dissertation, University of Texas at Austin, 1995). Dissertation Abstracts International, 56(6–B), Adams, T. B., Bezner, J. R., Drabbs, M. E., Zambarano, R. J., & Steinhardt, M. A. (2000). Conceptualization and measurement of the spiritual and psychological dimensions of wellness in a college population. Journal of American College Health, 48(4), Baron, R.M., & Kenny, D.A. (1986). The moderator-mediator variable distinction in social psychological research: Conceptual, strategic, and statistical considerations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51, 1173–1182. Emmons, R.A. (2005). Striving for the sacred: Personal goals, life meaning, and religion. Journal of Social Issues, 61, 731–745. Feenstra, J. S., & Brouwer, A. M. (2008). Christian vocation: Defining relations with identity status, college adjustment, and spirituality. Journal of Psychology and Theology, 36(2), Jaccard, J., Guilamo-Ramos, V., Johansson, M., & Bouris, A. (2006). Multiple regression analyses in clinical child and adolescent psychology. Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, 35, 456–479. Nelms, L., Hutchins, E., Hutchins, D., & Pursley, R. J. (2007). Spirituality and the health of college students. Journal of Religion and Health, 46(2), Thoits, P. A. (2012). Role-identity salience, purpose and meaning in life, and well-being among volunteers. Social Psychology Quarterly, 75(4), Discussion The current study sought to investigate the relationship between general life purpose, identity status, and perceived well-being. Our findings indicate highly significant relationships between these variables. These findings suggest that identity development in college students relates significantly to their overall personal well-being and general life purpose. Results suggest that the outcomes obtained in this study support the notion that life purpose correlates positively with achieved identity status. This discovery also reinforces Feenstra and Brouwer’s finding (2008) that students who maintain a strong sense of vocational life purpose foster a strong sense of identity. Moreover, the results also endorse our hypothesis that both general life purpose and identity significantly predict well-being. This outcome corroborates the link between life purpose, sense of identity, and perceived well-being as William Hettler (as cited by Nelms et al., 2007) describes well-being as comprising psychological, occupational, and spiritual aspects. The possession of a healthy sense of life purpose and personal identity by college students may therefore improve these sub-dimensions of well-being, therefore contributing to overall well-being. In regard to our hypothesis of mediation, identity diffusion and identity moratorium negatively mediated the relationship between life purpose and perceived well-being. In other words, part of the influence of life purpose on well-being is due to identity, and underdeveloped identity negatively impacts well-being and life purpose. As Adam et al. (2000) suggested, life purpose seems to relate to perceived well-being when supported by internal factors, such as self-understanding and identity. These results indicate that students who have adopted the identities of others or have yet to commit to an ideology may be struggling with their understanding of self which may lead to a poor perception of their personal well-being. Moreover, students lacking purpose in life not only decrease the likelihood of developing a healthy sense of self, but also may hinder their own well-being. Future research should include an exploration into why positive identity development did not mediate the relationship between life purpose and well-being. The development of another scale of identity, which possesses a total composite score, may increase validity and also reveal a more comprehensive model of how identity relates with life purpose and well-being. Additionally, it would be helpful to examine how identity relates specifically to the various dimensions of wellness, such as psychological and spiritual, and may reveal greater understanding about how identity particularly impacts well-being. In order to generalize these results to other populations, a larger sampling of individuals would be required for future research. Acknowledgments Thank you to Pepperdine University and all the students who contributed to this project. A special thanks is extended to Cindy Miller-Perrin and Don Thompson for collecting years of data and for all of their help in bringing this project to fruition. Funding for this project was provided by the Center for Faith and Learning. Results. Table 1 Correlation Results Between Identity Status, Perceived Well-Being, and General Life Purpose. VariablePerceived Well-BeingGeneral Life Purpose Identity Achievement 0.272** 0.448** Identity Diffusion–0.336**–0.321** Identity Moratorium–0.355**–0.417** Identity Foreclosure –0.146* –0.112 Perceived Well-Being – 0.533** *p < 0.05 (2-tailed). **p < 0.01 (2-tailed). Table 2 Mediation Regression Analysis Including General Life Purpose, Well-Being, and Identity Diffusion. Variable BSE Bß 95% CI (lower) 95% CI (upper) R2R2 1. Predicting Well-Being from GLP ** Predicting Diffusion from GLP– –0.32**–0.22– Predicting Well-Being from Diffusion controlling for GLP– –0.18**–0.93– Predicting Well-Being from GLP with Diffusion added ** **p < 0.01 (2-tailed). Table 3 Mediation Regression Analysis Including General Life Purpose, Well-Being, and Identity Moratorium. Variable BSE Bß 95% CI (lower) 95% CI (upper) R2R2 1. Predicting Well-Being from GLP ** Predicting Moratorium from GLP– –0.42**–0.24– Predicting Well-Being from Moratorium controlling for GLP– –0.15*–0.94– Predicting Well-Being from GLP with Moratorium added ** *p < 0.05 (2-tailed). **p < 0.01 (2-tailed). Pearson Product-Moment correlations were conducted between all dependent variables. Results revealed a significant positive correlation between identity achievement and both perceived well-being and general life purpose, whereas results demonstrated significant negative correlations between both identity diffusion and moratorium and both perceived well-being and general life purpose (see Table 1). A multiple linear regression analysis determined that identity achievement, diffusion, and moratorium all significantly predicted well-being. In order to examine the role of identity development as a mediator of life purpose and perceived well-being, the mediation method of Baron and Kenny (1986) was utilized. Life purpose served as the distal variable, perceived well-being as the outcome variable, and identity achievement, diffusion, and moratorium as the mediators. Identity achievement failed to predict perceived well-being when both life purpose and identity achievement were in the model (B = 0.17, p > 0.05). Table 2 contains the results for the analyses involving identity diffusion as a mediator between general life purpose and perceived well-being, and Table 3 contains the results using identity moratorium as a mediator. Both of these variables satisfied all four criteria. As general life purpose still predicted perceived well-being, as indicated by the significance of the regression coefficient, when either identity diffusion or moratorium was added, there remains only a partial mediation effect for identity diffusion and moratorium. Furthermore, the largest effect sizes of both identity diffusion (R 2 = 0.30) and identity moratorium (R 2 = 0.31) were found in the step involving life purpose and identity statues as predictors of perceived well-being.