Personal Projects Analysis

Personal Saliency

The personal saliency criterion requires that the units be personally significant to the individual being assessed and that these units be expressed in their own idiosyncratic language. In contrast with standard[Page 763] inventories, PPA does not supply instances of the unit of analysis, but elicits them. The personal saliency criterion ensures that individuals can generate examples of the plans and actions they deem important to know if we are to understand their lives.

Ecological Representativeness

Projects are not just personal constructions, they are contextually embedded actions. This criterion requires that an assessment procedure afford an understanding of the person's everyday social ecology. Whereas the personal saliency criterion highlights the subjective importance of personal projects, this criterion illuminates the contextual factors that frustrate or facilitate project pursuit.

Social Indicator Potential

Besides providing information relevant to individuals, we believe that assessment can also provide information relevant to the social ecologies (e.g., workplace, rural area) within which individuals carry out their projects. In short, data derived from PPA have the potential to contribute to the development of social indicators—such as which projects are difficult for elderly people living in rural areas, or which are most enjoyable for inner-city youth. This criterion ensures that the data we gather on individuals and their pursuits are relevant to policy makers who design the contexts within which these pursuits take place.

Temporal Extension

Many assessment devices use units that take “snapshots” of human characteristics; PPA allows the temporally extended nature of daily lives to come into focus. Personal projects typically proceed through stages of inception, planning, action, and termination, although there are individual differences in the extent to which these stages are negotiated. Although much of the research on personal projects is cross-sectional, there is increasing use of longitudinal designs using hierarchical analysis in which we can examine projects embedded within persons, who in turn are embedded in different ecologies.

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