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Assessing Disruptions in Meaning: Development of the Global Meaning Violation Scale

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Abstract

Models of meaning making following stressful events are based on the notion that individuals’ appraisals of events (i.e., their situational meaning) can violate their goals and beliefs (i.e., global meaning), and that resulting discrepancies between situational meaning and global meaning negatively affect their psychological adjustment. To date, research has relied primarily on indirect measures of meaning violation. We describe the development of a new instrument, the Global Meaning Violation Scale (GMVS), for directly assessing belief and goal violations. We establish the psychometric integrity of the GMVS across three studies. In Study 1, we identify and replicate a factor structure consisting of three subscales: belief violation, intrinsic goal violation, and extrinsic goal violation. In Study 2, we provide evidence for the reliability and validity of the GMVS. In Study 3, we test the predictive validity of the GMVS in a sample of undergraduates reporting on the most stressful experiences of their lives. Our findings indicate that the GMVS is a reliable and valid tool for directly examining global meaning violation. We anticipate that the GMVS will advance research on stress, trauma, and coping by giving researchers a tool to directly explore the role of violations in meaning making processes.

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Notes

  1. The use of a college student sample may raise concerns regarding type of stressor: Are most of the stressors experienced by participants of an academic nature, and what are the implications of this for the factor structure? To address these concerns, we coded the stressors reported by Study 1 participants as non-academic or academic stressors. We created two subsamples based on this coding and examined the final CFA model within each. In the non-academic stressors subsample (N = 363), the factor structure was intact (e.g., well defined factors) and model fit was similar to what we initially found (χ2 = 161.97, df = 62; CFI = .95; RMSEA = .07). The academic stressors subsample (N = 212) showed inadequate model fit, but most of this misfit could be attributed to a single item regarding “creative or artistic accomplishments.” Dropping this item resulted in model fit similar to what we initially found in the entire sample (χ2 = 140.06, df = 51; CFI = .92; RMSEA = .09). More importantly, the factors were all well-defined with factor loadings of adequate magnitudes. Thus, the factor structure from the final CFA model appeared to be relatively robust across both non-academic and academic stressors.

  2. One of the items on the scale refers to violation of belief in God as being in control. Potential concerns are whether this item may be problematic among those who do not believe in God and whether factor analysis results may not be consistent in such a subgroup. To explore this possibility, we created a subsample of individuals who identified as atheist or agnostic and replicated the final model in just this group. The results however did not change substantially (χ2 = 132.14, df = 62; CFI = .94; RMSEA = .07) and the item regarding God continued to have a significant loading (β = .44, p < .01) with a magnitude similar to that found in the full sample.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Connecticut, 406 Babbidge Rd., Storrs, CT, 06269-1020, USA

    Crystal L. Park, Kristen E. Riley, Login S. George, Ian A. Gutierrez, Dalnim Cho & Tosca D. Braun

  2. University of Connecticut Health Center, Farmington, CT, USA

    Amy E. Hale

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  6. Dalnim Cho
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  7. Tosca D. Braun
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Crystal L. Park.

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Conflict of Interest

Crystal L. Park, Kristen E. Riley, Login S. George, Ian Gutierrez, Amy E. Hale, Dalnim Cho and Tosca D. Braun declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the studies.

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No animal studies were carried out by the authors for this article.

Appendix: The Global Meaning Violations Scale

Appendix: The Global Meaning Violations Scale

When you think about how you felt before and after your most stressful experience:

  1. (1)

    How much does the occurrence of this stressful experience violate your sense of the world being fair or just?

  2. (2)

    How much does this stressful experience violate your sense that other forces have control in the world?

  3. (3)

    How much does this stressful experience violate your sense that God is in control?

  4. (4)

    How much does this stressful experience violate your sense of being in control of your life?

  5. (5)

    How much does this stressful experience violate your sense that the world is a good and safe place?

How much does your stressful experience interfere with your ability to accomplish each of these?

  1. (6)

    Social support and community

  2. (7)

    Self-acceptance

  3. (8)

    Physical health

  4. (9)

    Inner peace

  5. (10)

    Educational achievement

  6. (11)

    Achievement in my career

  7. (12)

    Creative or artistic accomplishment

  8. (13)

    Intimacy (emotional closeness)

Scoring syntax for calculating subscale means

  • Belief violations subscale: items 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

  • Intrinsic goal violations subscale: items 6, 7, 8, 9, 13

  • Extrinsic goal violations subscale: items 10, 11, 12

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Park, C.L., Riley, K.E., George, L.S. et al. Assessing Disruptions in Meaning: Development of the Global Meaning Violation Scale. Cogn Ther Res 40, 831–846 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10608-016-9794-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10608-016-9794-9

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