What Kinds of Experiences and Activities Contribute to College Students' Sense of Purpose? A Mixed-Methods Study

For many young people, attending college is a core marker of the transition to emerging adulthood. Some students thrive in college while others become lost, confused, or seem to be just marking their time. Some researchers have hypothesized that one thing that can help students take advantage of their college experience is if they are firmly anchored in their own life goals and sense of purpose. The primary goal of this study is to contribute to knowledge about the role of a sense of purpose in college students' development, including not only its potential benefits to their academic functioning and wellbeing, but also the experiences and activities that students find helpful to constructing a sense of purpose. This mixed-methods study is focused on the role of a sense of purpose in college students' academic and psychological lives, and especially on the kinds of activities and experiences that colleges themselves can provide that support the development of purpose. This study emphasizes the student perspective and their voices and investigates the functioning of purpose for specific subgroups of students. The study is organized around the following two questions: Do college students with a greater sense of purpose also show higher levels of academic functioning and well-being? What experiences and activities contribute to the development of a sense of purpose? As part of the undergraduate assessment of the Psychology department at a large, urban, primarily non-residential, public research university in the Pacific Northwest of the United States, information from 560 students attending psychology classes were collected during the Winter quarter of the 2023-2024 academic year. Students completed a newly designed measure of purpose, four measures of academic functioning, three measures of well-being, a checklist of literature- and practice-informed potentially purpose-promotive activities, and answered the open-ended question: "What experiences have you had at PSU that have been the most helpful for developing your purpose?" Quantitative data were analyzed by conducting simple regressions and frequency counts. Results indicated that sense of purpose is significantly and positively associated with students' grade point average, credits earned, intent to persist, perceived value of their education, sense of community, personal growth, and meaningful life engagement. The most frequently endorsed purpose-promotive activities were talking about purpose with friends and family, meeting with an academic advisor, volunteering, and taking a job and/or personality assessment. Qualitative responses were analyzed using a version of thematic analysis known as Template Analysis. Results indicated that there are many kinds of activities and experiences that students found to be helpful for developing their purposes, and that these processes are happening throughout many different places across the university. Findings from this study have implications for researchers, advisors, faculty, and university administrators.