An Exploration of the Structure of Goal Representation

Goal representation characterizes the cognitive structures people use to frame, perceive, and evaluate goals. Variance in goal representation provides meaningful insight into goal pursuit. However, the conceptual structure of this multifaceted construct has yet to be established. Most Goal-related theories and empirical research focus on a limited subset of dimensions, such as specificity or importance. The present project explores and evaluates the conceptual structure of goal representation using a data-driven meta-theoretical approach. We collected more than 2000 goals from 669 participants in three studies with college and online samples. In Studies 1-3, participants rated all their goals on 31 goal representation dimensions. In Study 3, participants completed three monthly follow-ups and rated all their goals again at the end. We independently conducted exploratory factor analysis in each study and extracted a four-component (Value, External Motive, Clarity, and Consensus) and a six-component structure. We evaluated the replicability and reliability of both structures. We found that all components from the four-component structure aligned across three studies and had moderate to high inter-rater reliability. All components from the six-component structure aligned between baseline and post-assessment at 3 months, and Value, External Motive, and Consensus had test-retest reliability > .7. In Study 3, we found that External Motive and Attainability were positively associated with goal progress, but Value was not. Attainability was also positively associated with progress satisfaction. This project establishes a dimensional space to describe mental representations of goals and sets the foundations for future research to build tools to assess goal representation.