Reliability and factorial structure of the Chinese version of the purpose in life questionnaire

The Chinese version of the Purpose in Life Questionnaire (PIL) was administered to 2,140 secondary school students. The PIL was found to have high internal consistency as a scale and high item‐total correlations for most of the items. Factor analysis with a five‐factor solution showed that five factors were abstracted from the scale, namely, Quality of Life, Meaning of Existence, Death, Choice, and Retirement. By randomly splitting the total sample into two subsamples, high coefficients of congruence were found for Factors 1, 2, 3, and 5. Alternative analysis with a two‐factor solution showed that two general factors, namely, Existence and Death, could be extracted. The psychometric properties of the Chinese version of the PIL and the implications of the findings were discussed.