engleski

A cross-country study of personal goals and meanings

People invest significant effort and time of their daily lives in pursuing personally important and meaningful goals. The eudaimonic perspective claims that goals setting associated with meaning contributes to well-being. The study investigated the most common goals and meaningful domains across 13 countries and explored the correspondence of future goals with what is meaningful in life. Family is the most prominent goal and meaningful domain in life, followed by work and interpersonal relationships. The pattern of future goals is generally similar across all countries with few exceptions. Community and society oriented goals are more important in South India, while education is more frequently reported goal in Mexico than in other countries. Regardless of other meaningful things, future goals are mostly focused on family and work. Only these goals are congruent with meaningful domains in the whole sample. The discrepancy between goals and meaning decreases with age. There are also some gender differences in the congruence between goals and meanings. For females, goals and meanings correspond only for family, while for males, correspondence occurs in several domains (family, work, standard, health, and community and social issues). The prominence of family and work related goals and meaning was confirmed. The findings show that setting priorities in daily life is not always associated with what is meaningful. Cultural and demographic factors may constrain the process of aligning goals with meanings.

Goals ; meaning ; life domains ; cross-cultural

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