Development and validation of Yogic Personal Excellence Inventory

Background

In his Yoga Sutras, Patanjali delineates the principles, processes, practices, and impediments of personal excellence (PE). Unlike Patanjali's perspective, existing conceptualizations and measures of PE are centered on quantifying well-being, leadership effectiveness, professional competence, academic and sports performance, and motivation. However, no yoga-based operationalized model or measure of PE exists to date.

Objectives

This study aimed to develop and validate a novel self-report yogic personal excellence inventory (YPEI) with constructs derived from the PYS.

Materials and methods

The research was conducted in three rigorous phases to establish YPEI's reliability and validity. Firstly, the YPEI's items were framed and validated for their content by ten experts. Secondly, the first draft of the YPEI was administered to 721 participants for exploratory factor analysis (EFA). The YPEI was then administered to 364 participants to confirm the explored factor structure. Lastly, YPEI's inter-instrument convergent and discriminant validity were assessed by computing correlation with three criteria measures―the vikruti subdosha questionnaire, the vedic personality inventory, and the personal efficacy scale.

Conclusion

The model was a good fit with eight factors (psychic incompetence, attachment, despair, existential thinking, somatic illness, laziness, indulgence, and instability). As hypothesized, PE was positively associated with personal efficacy and vedic personality but negatively with vikruti. YPEI will be applicable to measure the psychic and physical morbidities and comorbidities of healthy/unhealthy individuals and prescribe the required personalized bio-psycho-socio-spiritual protocol to minimize them and maximize PE.