The Life Engagement Scale

The Life Engagement Test is designed to measure purpose in life, defined as the degree to which a person engages in activities that are meaningful to them.

Constructs Being Measured
Primary: 
Sense of purpose
Secondary: 
Psychological well-being
How to Access and Cite

To access the resource, visit https://www.cmu.edu/dietrich/psychology/pdf/scales/LET_Scale.pdf.
This is a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1-5, 1,“Strongly disagree” and 5,“Strongly agree”. Total score: Items are then summed, yielding a range from 6 to 30. Higher scores indicate greater levels of purpose in life.

Outcome Families
Well-being
Connectedness
Awareness
Agency
Mastery
Programmatic Purpose
Classroom-level data and feedback
Program-level monitoring and evaluation
Instrument Characteristics
Type of items: 

6 Likert type questions

Format: 
Self-report
Applicable Grade Levels
Pre-primary
Primary
Secondary
Post-secondary
Supporting Research

Scheier, M. F., Wrosch, C., Baum, A., Cohen, S., Martire, L. M., Matthews, K. A., Schulz, R. & Zdaniuk, B. (2006). The Life Engagement Test: Assessing purpose in life. Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 29(3), 291.

Points to Consider

For more guidance on measuring student learning and best practices in adapting measurement tools to your contexts, check out the Portal page on Monitoring and Evaluation. You can also contact Alvin Vista (Knowledge Lead, Student Outcomes) and Robbie Dean (Director of Research) for specific questions.