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Factorial Structure of Längle’s Existence Scale

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Logotherapy and Existential Analysis

Abstract

Existential meaning in life is becoming an increasingly important measure of personal assessment. In search of a suitable instrument to measure existential meaning, the authors reviewed several measures. Eventually, they selected Alfried Längle’s Existence Scale (ES), doing so on theoretical grounds. The ES is a fairly new self-rating instrument that assesses the degree of personal search for existential meaning in life. The aim of the current study is to examine the construct validity of the ES empirically by analyzing the factor structure of the scale. Confirmatory factor analysis was applied. Inventory responses from 1187 participants were used as the overall sample, which was based on four samples, consisting of elementary school teachers (N = 215), elementary school principals (N = 514), pastors (N = 266), and social workers (N = 192). The results show that confirmatory factor analysis did not confirm the construct validity of the ES. The ES has been developed to measure existential meaning in life. There is no evidence in the current study that Längle’s ES is a valid and acceptable measure of existential meaning.

With kind reprint permission from the Journal of Articles in Support of the Null Hypothesis (originally published in Vol. 8, No. 2)

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, The Open University, 2960, 6401 DL, Heerlen, The Netherlands

    André Brouwers & Welko Tomic

Authors
  1. André Brouwers
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  2. Welko Tomic
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Bendern, Principality of Liechtenstein a, Viktor Frankl Chair of Philosophy and Ps, Wien, Wien, Austria

    Alexander Batthyány

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Brouwers, A., Tomic, W. (2016). Factorial Structure of Längle’s Existence Scale. In: Batthyány, A. (eds) Logotherapy and Existential Analysis. Logotherapy and Existential Analysis: Proceedings of the Viktor Frankl Institute Vienna, vol 1. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-29424-7_9

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