The development, construct validity, and clinical utility of the spiritual meaning scale

The authors constructed a measure of spiritual meaning, defined as the extent to which an individual believes that life or some force of which life is a function has a purpose, will, or way in which individuals participate, to supplement measures of personal meaning (mindfulness to a framework or philosophy of life) and implicit meaning (engaging in activities and valuing attitudes that people typically report as comprising an ideally meaningful life). Using a sample of 465 undergraduates, the authors selected 14 Likert-format items that exhibited desirable psychometric characteristics to constitute the Spiritual Meaning Scale (SMS). Along with measures of personal meaning, implicit meaning, and the Big Five personality dimensions, the SMS was analyzed in relationship to mental health measures (hope, depression, anxiety, and antisocial features) that had also been administered to the aforementioned sample. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that each of the meaning variables explained variance in hope and depression beyond the variance explained by the Big Five personality factors.