Assessing The Presence Of And Search For Meaning In Life Questionnaire

Journal of Counseling Psychology
2006, Vol. 53, No. 1, 80 –93

Copyright 2006 by the American Psychological Association
0022-0167/06/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/0022-0167.53.1.80

The Meaning in Life Questionnaire: Assessing the Presence of and Search for Meaning in Life
Michael F. Steger and Patricia Frazier

Shigehiro Oishi

University of Minnesota—Twin Cities Campus

University of Virginia

Matthew Kaler
University of Minnesota—Twin Cities Campus
Counseling psychologists often work with clients to increase their well-being as well as to decrease their distress. One important aspect of well-being, highlighted particularly in humanistic theories of the counseling process, is perceived meaning in life. However, poor measurement
Study 1a
The purpose of Study 1 was to create and test an item pool for the construction of a measure of meaning in life. Study 1a provided

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the initial testing of items and factor structure. Study 1b refined the items using confirmatory factor analyses (CFA). Efforts first were made to fully sample the content domain of meaning in life through a review of theories and existing measures of meaning in life and the search for meaning. Items were written to oversample content relevant to meaning in life (e.g., Clark & Watson, 1995;
Reise, Waller, & Comrey, 2000) and were evaluated with regard to clarity (e.g., not asking two questions in an item; see, e.g., Dawis,
2000; Visser, Krosnick, & Lavrakas, 2000) and content specificity
(e.g., not referring to positive or negative affect; see, e.g., Clark &
Watson, 1995). Eighty-three items were initially generated. Two of the authors and two trained research assistants evaluated these items with regard to the above criteria, and 44 were retained. These
44 items were administered to a sample of undergraduate students to obtain data for factor analyses and scale revision. In
Convergent validity is demonstrated by significant correlations between different methods of measuring the same trait
(monotrait– heteromethod). Discriminant validity requires a lengthier set of comparisons, all of which essentially demonstrate higher correlations among methods of assessing the same trait as compared with those measuring different traits (either heterotrait– monomethod or heterotrait– heteromethod). The two methods were participant’s self-report and informant report. Participants completed the MLQ and a variety of other meaning and well-being measures at two time points (1 month apart). Informant reports of all the measures were obtained once, between Times 1 and 2.
Convergent validity in an MTMM study is established when different methods of measuring the same trait are significantly related. Thus, self-reports on the Presence and Search subscales were expected to be significantly positively correlated with informant reports on those same subscales. Because the Presence subscale was designed to measure the same construct as the LRI and the PIL, significant correlations between self- and informant reports on the MLQ–P and the two other meaning measures would indicate convergent validity as well. Very large (Ͼ.70)