Abstract

DAMASIO, Bruno Figueiredo; KOLLER, Silvia Helena  and  SCHNELL, Tatjana. Sources of Meaning and Meaning in Life Questionnaire (SoMe): Psychometric Properties and Sociodemographic Findings in a Large Brazilian Sample. Acta de investigación psicol [online]. 2013, vol.3, n.3, pp.1205-1227. ISSN 2007-4719.

This study presents the psychometric properties of the Brazilian version of the Sources of Meaning and Meaning in Life Questionnaire (SoMe-BR). Participants were 3.034 subjects (63.9% women), ranging in age from 18 to 91 years. Reliability analysis, parallel analysis (PA), exploratory structural equation modeling (ESEM) and confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) were employed to evaluate the structure and reliability of the SoMe-BR. Through PA and ESEM, a five-dimension structure for the 26 sources of meaning was achieved. CFAs supported meaningfulness and crisis of meaning as two distinct constructs. Convergent validity within the SoMe-BR and between the SoMe-BR and other scales were also achieved. Regarding the SoMe scores and sociodemographic variables, significant main effects were found for gender, age groups and marital status. Our results corroborate the international literature, which claims in favor of the SoMe as a reliable measure to evaluate meaning in life contents in different cultural contexts.

Keywords : Meaning in life; Meaningfulness; Crisis of meaning; Validation; SoMe.