Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2019 Oct 1;44(9):1074-1082.
doi: 10.1093/jpepsy/jsz046.

Assessing Children's Eudaimonic Well-Being: The PROMIS Pediatric Meaning and Purpose Item Banks

Christopher B Forrest  1 , Katherine B Bevans  2 , Ania Filus  3 , Janine Devine  4 , Brandon D Becker  5 , Adam C Carle  6 , Rachel E Teneralli  1 , JeanHee Moon  1 , Ulrike Ravens-Sieberer  4
Affiliations

Assessing Children's Eudaimonic Well-Being: The PROMIS Pediatric Meaning and Purpose Item Banks

Christopher B Forrest et al. J Pediatr Psychol. .

Abstract

Objective: To describe the development of the Patient-Reported Outcome Measurement Information System (PROMIS) Pediatric Meaning and Purpose item banks, child-report and parent-proxy editions.

Methods: Data were collected from two samples. The first comprised 1,895 children (8-17 years old) and 927 parents of children 5-17 years old recruited from an Internet panel, medical clinics, and schools. The second comprised a nationally representative sample of 990 children 8-17 years old and 1,292 parents of children 5-17 years old recruited from a different Internet panel. Item pool evaluation was done with Sample 1 and analyses were used to support decisions about item retention. The combined sample was used for item response theory (IRT) calibration of the item bank. Both samples were used in validation studies.

Results: Eleven items were deleted from the item pool because of poor psychometric performance. The final versions of the scales showed excellent reliability (>0.90). Short form scales (4 or 8 items) had a high degree of precision across over 4 SD units of the latent variable. The item bank positively correlated with extant measures of positive psychological functioning, and negatively correlated with measures of emotional distress, pessimism, and pain. Lower meaning and purpose scores were associated with adolescence and presence of a special healthcare need.

Conclusion: The PROMIS Pediatric Meaning and Purpose item banks and their short forms are ready for use in clinical research and practice. They are measures of children's eudaimonic well-being and indicative of children's hopefulness, optimism, goal-directedness, and feelings that life is worth living.

Keywords: PROMIS; child; eudaimonic well-being; item response theory; meaning and purpose; subjective well-being.

PubMed Disclaimer

References

    1. Barakat L. P., Alderfer M. A., Kazak A. E. (2006). Posttraumatic growth in adolescent survivors of cancer and their mothers and fathers. Journal of Pediatric Psychology, 31, 413–419. - PubMed
    1. Carle A. C. (2010). Mitigating systematic measurement error in comparative effectiveness research in heterogeneous populations. Medical Care, 48, S68–74. - PubMed
    1. Craig B. M., Hays R. D., Pickard A. S., Cella D., Revicki D. A., Reeve B.B. (2013). Comparison of US panel vendors for online surveys. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 15, e260.. - PMC - PubMed
    1. DeWit S. J., Woolsey M. L., Walsh W. B. (2009). College student rention: An exploration of the relationship between self-efficacy beliefs and purpose in life among college students. Journal of College Student Development, 50, 19–34.
    1. Edelen M. O., Reeve B. B. (2007). Applying item response theory (IRT) modeling to questionnaire development, evaluation, and refinement. Quality of Life Research, 16 (Suppl 1), 5–18. - PubMed

Publication types