Use the Underscore.js findWhere function (http://underscorejs.org/#findWhere):
var purposeObjects = [
{purpose: "daily"},
{purpose: "weekly"},
{purpose: "monthly"}
];
var daily = _.findWhere(purposeObjects, {purpose: 'daily'});
daily
would equal:
{"purpose":"daily"}
Here's a fiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/spencerw/oqbgc21x/
To return more than one (if you had more in your array) you could use _.where(...)