Rasch analysis of the Meaning in Life Questionnaire among adults from South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand

Health and Quality of Life Outcomes
Lusilda SchutteDianne A Vella-Brodrick

Abstract

Meaning in life is a key indicator of subjective well-being and quality of life. Further developments in understanding and enhancing the construct will depend inter alia on the sound measurement thereof. This study is at the forefront of applying modern psychometric techniques to the Meaning in Life Questionnaire, a scale widely used to assess meaning in life. The Rasch rating scale model was applied to the Presence and Search subscales of the Meaning in Life Questionnaire using a sample of 601 adults from South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. The Presence subscale was insensitive at high levels of presence of meaning while the majority of the respondents fell in that range. Removal of item 9 ("My life has no clear purpose") and collapsing the response categories indicative of low and medium levels of the latent construct significantly improved the subscale's targeting and fit to the Rasch model, resulting in a subscale that exhibited differential item functioning on items 1 ("I understand my life's meaning"), 4 ("My life has a clear sense of purpose"), and 5 ("I have a good sense of what makes my life meaningful") for country, but none for gender, age group, or education level. The Search subscale yielded disordered catego...Continue Reading

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