Psychometric Evaluation of the Meaningful Life Measure

The 23-item Meaningful Life Measure (Morgan and Farsides 2008) comprises five subscales, each designed to assess a distinct component of personal meaning: purposeful life; valued life; accomplished life; principled life; and exciting life. In addition to providing a comprehensive composite meaning measure, this instrument presents the possibility of measuring these components separately in future research applications. To demonstrate the utility of their separate measurement, the present study therefore aimed to show differential patterns of correlation between these five subscales and meaning correlates identified in the literature. The MLM's factor structure and internal reliability were replicated on the present sample. Evidence was then provided for the MLM's convergent validity, and it was demonstrated that its five subscales were indeed differently predicted by the meaning correlates from the literature. Findings attest to the practical utility of a five-factor conceptualisation of meaning in life. In addition to identifying people who score low and high on different factors of meaning in life, the MLM facilitates the further investigation of specific antecedents and consequences of different meaning components.