Meaning, Multidimensional Measurement of Religiousness

Abstract

The Meaning, Multidimensional Measurement of Religiousness scale represents a seminal psychometric instrument designed to evaluate the explicit intersection between religious or spiritual beliefs and existential meaning-making, teleological coherence, and life purpose. Developed by Kenneth I. Pargament and colleagues in conjunction with the Fetzer Institute and the National Institute on Aging (NIA) Working Group (1999), this measurement tool was engineered to address longstanding methodological limitations in epidemiological and behavioral health research, where religiosity had historically been reduced to simplistic, unidimensional indices such as denominational affiliation or church attendance frequency. The instrument exists in two primary iterations: a comprehensive 20-item Long Form and an abbreviated 2-item Short Form adapted for large-scale epidemiological investigations, including the 1998 General Social Survey (GSS). Both configurations employ a standardized 5-point Likert-type response format ranging from 1 (Strongly disagree) to 5 (Strongly agree). Across diverse clinical, community, and geriatric cohorts, the Long Form demonstrates exceptional internal consistency (Cronbach’s $\alpha ge .93$; McDonald’s $\omega ge .94$), while the Short Form demonstrates acceptable reliability for population-level surveys ($\alpha \approx .70-.75$). Confirmatory factor analyses consistently substantiate an overarching unidimensional construct reflecting sanctified purpose and spiritual coherence, though multidimensional explorations identify nuanced sub-facets including divine destiny, transcendent connection, and existential coping under adversity. Construct validity is evidenced by strong positive correlations with existential well-being, intrinsic religiosity, optimism, and positive religious coping, alongside robust inverse relationships with existential despair, depressive symptomatology, and demoralization. Consequently, the instrument serves as a critical asset in behavioral medicine, psychiatric epidemiology, psycho-oncology, and the psychology of religion.

Keywords

Meaning, Multidimensional Measurement of Religiousness, Kenneth I. Pargament, Fetzer Institute, spiritual meaning, existential purpose, religious coping, psychometrics, health psychology, sanctification

Authors

The scale was developed under the leadership of Kenneth I. Pargament, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Bowling Green State University, an internationally recognized authority in the psychology of religion, spirituality, and coping. Pargament pioneered the theoretical operationalization of religious coping models and sanctification theory.

Co-investigators and foundational contributors include Annette Mahoney, Ph.D. (Bowling Green State University), renowned for her extensive empirical work on the sanctification of life endeavors and family relationships, and the multidisciplinary members of the Fetzer Institute / National Institute on Aging Working Group. Notable members of this panel included:

• Ellen L. Idler, Ph.D. (Emory University)
• Christopher G. Ellison, Ph.D. (University of Texas at San Antonio)
• Linda K. George, Ph.D. (Duke University)
• Neal Krause, Ph.D. (University of Michigan)
• Jeffrey S. Levin, Ph.D., M.P.H. (Baylor University)
• Marcia G. Ory, Ph.D., M.P.H. (Texas A&M University)
• Lynda H. Powell, Ph.D. (Rush University Medical Center)
• David R. Williams, Ph.D., M.P.H. (Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health)
• Marc A. Musick, Ph.D. (University of Texas at Austin)

Institutional contact for historical documentation regarding the working group’s monographs resides with the John E. Fetzer Institute, 9292 West KL Avenue, Kalamazoo, Michigan 49009, USA.

Purpose

For decades, empirical health research treated religiousness and spirituality (R/S) as distal, confounding demographic variables rather than dynamic, proximate psychosocial mechanisms. The primary purpose of the Meaning, Multidimensional Measurement of Religiousness scale is to provide a theoretically driven, psychometrically rigorous operationalization of the specific pathway through which transcendent beliefs endow life with coherence, significance, and goal-directedness. While general existential measures—such as Crumbaugh and Maholick’s Purpose in Life Test—assess whether an individual perceives life as purposeful, they remain largely agnostic to the etiology or substantive foundation of that purpose. Conversely, standard religious inventories frequently record institutional adherence without evaluating whether such commitments successfully translate into a subjective framework of meaning.

The Meaning subscale was engineered to bridge this conceptual divide. It specifically captures the degree to which an individual’s ultimate goals, daily activities, identity, and conceptualization of adversity are integrated within a sacred or spiritual worldview. Clinically, the scale is deployed across behavioral health, palliative care, and psycho-oncology settings to assess spiritual resources and identify spiritual struggle. In populations confronting life-limiting diagnoses, severe trauma, or major life transitions, the capacity to frame suffering within a divine or transcendent architecture frequently mitigates depressive affect, promotes post-traumatic growth, and prevents existential demoralization. In empirical health research, the instrument elucidates the bio-psycho-social-spiritual pathways connecting subjective beliefs to neuroendocrine function, immune competence, treatment adherence, and mortality outcomes.

Psychological Construct

The psychological construct assessed by this instrument is Spiritual and Religious Meaning. Within contemporary psychometrics and clinical psychology, meaning is widely recognized as a tripartite construct comprising cognitive coherence (the feeling that life makes sense), purpose (possession of overarching, valued life goals), and existential significance (the subjective appraisal that one’s life matters). The Meaning subscale of the Multidimensional Measurement of Religiousness/Spirituality (MMRS) operationalizes this tripartite architecture specifically through a transcendent or sacred lens.

1. Divine and Sacred Teleology (Purpose and Mission)

This dimension examines how an individual’s life aims, career trajectories, and everyday responsibilities are interpreted as manifestations of a divine calling or transcendent vocation. Rather than viewing purpose as an arbitrary human invention, respondents exhibiting high scores conceptualize their life goals as participating in an ultimate or sacred plan (e.g., “The goals of my life grow out of my understanding of God”; “I am trying to fulfill my God-given purpose in life”). This sacred teleology converts quotidian obligations into endeavors of profound personal and spiritual significance.

2. Transcendent Coherence and Global Meaning

Cognitive coherence entails possessing an overarching schema that integrates diverse, ambiguous, and fragmented experiences into a unified narrative. In this instrument, transcendent coherence measures the extent to which an individual’s relationship with the sacred provides a stable cognitive framework (e.g., “My spiritual beliefs give my life a sense of significance and purpose”; “Knowing that I am a part of something greater than myself gives meaning to my life”). This dimension buffers against the existential fragmentation that often accompanies societal alienation or radical unpredictability.

3. Redemptive Existential Coping (Meaning in Adversity)

A core sub-facet of Pargament’s construct is the application of spiritual frameworks to transform negative events. Suffering, physical pain, and tragedy threaten global meaning systems. This scale assesses the functional capacity of religious beliefs to reframe distress into opportunities for growth, divine connection, or existential testing (e.g., “My religious beliefs help me find a purpose in even the most painful and confusing events in my life”; “Looking at the most troubling or confusing events from a spiritual perspective adds meaning to my life”). Through this mechanism, pain is experienced not as gratuitous absurdity, but as a meaningful chapter in an unfolding existential journey.

4. Spiritual Contingency and Dependency

The construct also evaluates the extent to which an individual’s sense of existential viability is intimately bound to their spiritual connectivity. Items capturing this dynamic explore the psychological vulnerability that emerges when spiritual ties are severed (e.g., “Without my religious foundation, my life would be meaningless”; “When I lose touch with God, I have a harder time feeling that there is purpose and meaning in life”). This dimension measures the exclusivity and depth of the spiritual system as the primary foundation of the individual’s psychological equilibrium.

Theoretical Framework

The conceptual infrastructure of the Meaning scale is rooted primarily in Kenneth I. Pargament’s transactional theory of religious coping (Pargament, 1997) and the broader cognitive-existential paradigms articulated by Viktor Frankl, Richard Lazarus, and Susan Folkman.

Frankl’s logotherapy posits that the “will to meaning” is the primary human motivational force. Frankl hypothesized that meaning can be discovered through creative values (work and deeds), experiential values (encountering nature or relationships), and attitudinal values (the stance one adopts toward unavoidable suffering). Pargament advanced this framework by demonstrating that religion and spirituality represent unique, non-reducible systems of meaning that satisfy all three of Frankl’s pathways. Religion offers a distinct cognitive orienting system—a generalized world-view comprising beliefs, practices, and values that guides individuals in interpreting life events.

According to Pargament’s theory of sanctification (Pargament & Mahoney, 2005), when aspects of life (such as goals, relationships, struggles, and daily labor) are perceived as possessing sacred qualities or character, individuals invest greater psychological effort into preserving and cultivating them. Sanctified aspects of life elicit intense positive emotions, greater resilience, and an enduring sense of coherence. Conversely, when life events are viewed in absolute secular isolation, individuals may be more vulnerable to existential vacuum and existential despair during periods of severe trauma.

Additionally, the scale draws directly from Crystal Park’s integrated meaning-making model (Park, 2010). Park delineates global meaning (general beliefs, ultimate goals, and overarching values) from situational meaning (appraisals formed during specific stressor transactions). When situational appraisals clash violently with global meaning—such as the sudden death of a loved one or a catastrophic medical prognosis—individuals experience psychological distress. The MMRS Meaning scale measures the structural strength and accessibility of spiritual global meaning systems, which provide the interpretive templates required to reappraise situational traumas into congruent, spiritually meaningful realities.

Validity

The validity of the Meaning subscale has been rigorously substantiated across multi-method empirical investigations, including national probability samples, clinical trials, and epidemiological cohorts.

Construct and Convergent Validity

Extensive psychometric investigations have established strong convergent validity between the Meaning subscale and established markers of existential adjustment. In studies utilizing the Fetzer Institute’s national survey dataset and the 1998 General Social Survey (GSS; Idler et al., 2004), the Meaning scale correlated positively and robustly with:

• Intrinsic Religious Orientation (Allport & Ross; $r = .72$ to $.81$, $p < .001$)
• The Purpose in Life Test (PIL; Crumbaugh & Maholick; $r = .64$, $p < .001$)
• The Existential Well-Being subscale of the Spiritual Well-Being Scale (SWBS; Paloutzian & Ellison; $r = .68$, $p < .001$)
• Positive Religious Coping (Brief RCOPE; Pargament et al.; $r = .58$ to $.69$, $p < .001$)
• Life Satisfaction measured via the Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS; Diener et al.; $r = .41$ to $.52$, $p < .001$)

Discriminant Validity

Discriminant validity analyses confirm that the Meaning scale evaluates an autonomous psychological construct rather than generic psychological well-being, extraversion, or social conformity. The scale exhibits weak or non-significant correlations with the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale ($r = .08$ to $.14$, $p > .05$). Furthermore, it reliably diverges from negative religious coping (spiritual struggle, divine abandonment appraisals), exhibiting negligible to slightly negative zero-order correlations ($r = -.06$ to $-.18$), confirming that spiritual meaning is not simply the mirror inverse of spiritual distress, but a distinct psychological resource.

Criterion and Predictive Validity

Prospective epidemiological and clinical studies demonstrate the predictive power of the Meaning scale regarding mental and physical health endpoints. In longitudinal cohorts of medically ill elderly patients and oncology populations, high baseline scores on spiritual meaning significantly predicted lower depressive symptomatology ($b = -0.28, p < .01$) and lower rates of demoralization syndrome, after controlling for baseline somatic illness severity, age, sex, and socioeconomic background. In cardiovascular health studies, higher spiritual meaning has been prospectively linked to reduced ambulatory blood pressure reactivity and more favorable diurnal cortisol slopes, illustrating downstream physiological correlates of existential coherence.

Reliability

The psychometric reliability of the Meaning scale has been validated extensively across cross-sectional, longitudinal, and clinical psychometric evaluations.

Internal Consistency

For the 20-item Long Form, internal consistency metrics consistently exceed standard psychometric thresholds across diverse demographic segments:

• Cronbach’s Alpha ($lpha$): Literature consistently reports $lpha$ values between $.93$ and $.96$ in both non-clinical community samples and clinical healthcare populations (Pargament & Mahoney, 1998; Idler et al., 2004).
• McDonald’s Omega ($\omega$): More recent psychometric re-evaluations utilizing structural equation modeling report McDonald’s hierarchical and total omega coefficients surpassing $.94$ ($\omega_t = .95$), confirming that the observed variance is overwhelmingly attributable to a common latent dimension.
• Short Form Reliability: The 2-item Short Form demonstrates acceptable internal consistency for large epidemiological batteries, with Pearson inter-item correlation coefficients typically ranging between $r = .55$ and $.65$ ($p < .001$), yielding a Spearman-Brown split-half coefficient and Cronbach’s $lpha$ between $.70$ and $.78$ across diverse waves of the General Social Survey.

Temporal Stability (Test-Retest Reliability)

Evaluation of temporal stability across intervals ranging from 4 to 12 weeks demonstrates high test-retest reliability ($r_{tt} = .82$ to $.88$, $p < .001$) in stable community adults, indicating that the scale evaluates an enduring cognitive-existential disposition rather than transient, state-dependent affect. Over prolonged multi-year follow-ups, minor shifts in scores meaningfully correspond to significant life transitions, severe health crises, or intentional spiritual transformations, substantiating the scale’s sensitivity to clinically meaningful existential change.

Factor Analysis

The underlying latent dimensionality of the Meaning scale has been investigated through both exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA).

Confirmatory Factor Analyses and Structural Fit

During initial instrument validation across diverse demographic samples ($N > 1,400$), single-factor and multidimensional hierarchical models were evaluated using maximum likelihood estimation. A strictly unidimensional model demonstrated robust structural fit across standard goodness-of-fit indices:

• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): $.94$ to $.97$
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): $.93$ to $.96$
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): $.048$ to $.062$ ($90%\text{ CI } [0.042, 0.068]$)
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): $.032$ to $.041$

Factor Loadings

All 20 items in the Long Form exhibit high standardized factor loadings on the primary latent factor, with parameter estimates consistently exceeding $.60$ and frequently surpassing $.80$. The table below presents representative standardized factor loadings based on normative validation cohorts:

While the unidimensional structural formulation remains the dominant clinical and empirical convention, hierarchical exploratory modeling occasionally reveals two highly correlated second-order sub-factors: Spiritual Teleology / Purpose (reflecting items focused on goals, divine mission, and divine plan) and Spiritual Redemptive Meaning (reflecting items addressing the cognitive interpretation of joys, suffering, and existential coherence). However, because these factors correlate at $r > .80$, psychometricians uniformly endorse aggregate summation or mean-composite scoring.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Instrument Name: Meaning, Multidimensional Measurement of Religiousness / Spirituality
• Abbreviation: MMRS-Meaning
• Construct Assessed: Religious, spiritual, and transcendent life meaning, sacred purpose, and existential coherence
• Authors: Kenneth I. Pargament, Ph.D., Annette Mahoney, Ph.D., and the Fetzer Institute/National Institute on Aging Working Group
• Publication Year: 1999 (Long Form & Short Form published in the MMRS monograph)
• Target Population: Adults aged 18 and older; validated in healthy community cohorts, medically ill populations, and geriatric samples
• Administration Format: Self-administered paper-and-pencil or digital questionnaire; can also be delivered via structured clinical interview
• Completion Time: 4–6 minutes for the 20-item Long Form; under 1 minute for the 2-item Short Form
• Number of Items: 20 items (Long Form); 2 items (Short Form)
• Response Scale: 5-point Likert-type scale:
  • 1 = Strongly disagree
  • 2 = Disagree
  • 3 = Neutral
  • 4 = Agree
  • 5 = Strongly agree
• Scoring Procedures:
  • All items are keyed in a positive direction; there are no reverse-coded items.
  • Total Sum Score (Long Form): Calculated by summing all 20 individual item responses. Scores range from 20 to 100, where higher scores represent greater reliance on spiritual and religious frameworks for life meaning and purpose.
  • Mean Composite Score (Long Form): Sum divided by 20, yielding an interpretable metric from 1.00 to 5.00 matching the original response continuum.
  • Short Form Scoring: Calculated by summing the 2 items (range 2 to 10) or computing the mean of the 2 items (range 1.00 to 5.00).
• Missing Data Thresholds: For the Long Form, if more than 2 items (10%) are omitted, composite score calculation is discouraged. For missing data of 1–2 items, person-mean imputation based on remaining completed items is standard psychometric practice.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Meaning, Multidimensional Measurement of Religiousness scale was developed in 1998 and formally published in 1999 as part of the landmark monograph entitled Multidimensional Measurement of Religiousness/Spirituality for Use in Health Research: A Report of the Fetzer Institute/National Institute on Aging Working Group. Supported by public and philanthropic funding through the John E. Fetzer Institute and the National Institute on Aging, the monograph was placed in the public domain to stimulate empirical research on the connections between religion, spirituality, and physical and mental health.

Accordingly, the scale is free of charge and may be utilized for academic, clinical, and non-commercial scientific research without explicit licensing fees or royalty payments. When integrating this instrument into empirical protocols, investigators are requested to cite the foundational monograph (Fetzer Institute/National Institute on Aging Working Group, 1999) and key primary papers (e.g., Pargament & Mahoney, 1998; Idler et al., 2004). Commercial distribution, modification, or inclusion within proprietary software platforms requires prior written permission from the Fetzer Institute or the primary instrument developer.

References

Fetzer Institute / National Institute on Aging Working Group. (1999). Multidimensional measurement of religiousness/spirituality for use in health research: A report of the Fetzer Institute/National Institute on Aging Working Group. John E. Fetzer Institute. https://fetzer.org/resources/multidimensional-measurement-religiousnessspirituality-use-health-research

Frankl, V. E. (1985). Man’s search for meaning. Pocket Books. (Original work published 1959).

Idler, E. L., Ellison, C. G., George, L. K., Krause, N., Levin, J., Ory, M., Pargament, K. I., Powell, L. H., Williams, D. R., & Musick, M. A. (2004). Measuring multiple dimensions of religion and spirituality for health research: Conceptual background and findings from the 1998 General Social Survey. Research on Aging, 26(4), 327–365. https://doi.org/10.1177/0164027503257859

Krause, N. (2003). Religious meaning and subjective well-being in late life. The Journals of Gerontology, Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, 58(3), S160–S170. https://doi.org/10.1093/geronb/58.3.s160

Pargament, K. I. (1997). The psychology of religion and coping: Theory, research, practice. Guilford Press.

Pargament, K. I., & Mahoney, A. (2005). Sacred matters: Sanctification as a vital topic for the psychology of religion. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 15(3), 179–198. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327582ijpr1503_1

Park, C. L. (2010). Making sense of the meaning literature: An integrative review of meaning making and its effects on adjustment to stressful life events. Psychological Bulletin, 136(2), 257–301. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0018301

Steger, M. F., Frazier, P., Oishi, S., & Kaler, M. (2006). The Meaning in Life Questionnaire: Assessing the presence of and search for meaning in life. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 53(1), 80–93. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0167.53.1.80

13. Items of the Scale (Questionnaire)