Starting school with purpose: Self-regulatory strategies of first-semester university students

Purposefulness may facilitate self-regulation; however, little is known about the self-regulatory strategies that are implemented by purposeful individuals. Given the multiple regulatory challenges students face in their social and academic lives, a central aim of the current work was to consider how purposefulness and self-regulation are linked during the first semester of university. This 13-week-long study was conducted with first-semester college students (N = 256) in the United States of America to examine whether weekly fluctuations in purposefulness may be connected to the use of traditionally adaptive (problem-solving) and maladaptive (rumination and experiential avoidance) self-regulation strategies. Consistent with our hypothesis, at the within- and between-person level, higher purposefulness was associated with greater use of problem-solving, lower rumination, and lower experiential avoidance at the weekly level. The findings imply purposefulness is an important individual difference that may explain better or worse self-regulatory abilities.