Clinical Psychology Commons^™

Assessment Of “Meaning Made”: An Empirical Examination Of Factorial Structure And Measure Validity, Andrea M. Despotes

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Meaning-making theory posits that appraisal of a stressful event leads to distress if it is discrepant with one’s sense of “global meaning,” and such distress stimulates meaning-making processes aimed at eliminating the discrepancy. If meaning making leads to new meaning (i.e., “meaning made”), the stress-induced discrepancy is reduced, which generally is expected to result in positive adjustment. This study investigated the factorial structure of the meaning made construct using a sample (N = 372) of Amazon Mechanical Turk workers in the United States having “Masters” status and a minimum approval rating of 95%. Participants reported an average age of about …