Alexey M. Dvoinin
Candidate of Psychological Sciences, Reader, Department of Psychology, Institute of Educational Psychology and Pedagogy, Moscow City University, Moscow
alexdvoinin@mail.ru

Valeria Carroll
Candidate of Psychological Sciences, Senior Lecturer, School of Health and Social Care, University of Lincoln, Lincoln
vcarroll@lincoln.ac.uk

Methodological dilemmas of assessing the meaning-making process among individuals with various religious belief systems 

Abstract
The article highlights the difficulties of assessment of the meaning-making process among religious individuals and the problem of the development of new assessing instruments. Empirical methods widely known in psychology of personality, as authors argued, are constructed and based on secular samples and are not suitable for studying the meaning-making process of individuals with various religious belief systems. Psychologists have to construct methods, which eliminate the shortcomings of the questionnaires, and make the capturing of the meaning making in its complexity, nonlinearity and dynamism possible. An interdisciplinary approach could help in going this way.

Key words
meaning-making process, assessment of meaning making, religious belief system, methods of assessment of meaning making.

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Двойнин Алексей Михайлович
кандидат психологических наук, доцент департамента психологии, Институт педагогики и психологии образования, Московский городской педагогический университете, г. Москва
alexdvoinin@mail.ru

Кэрролл Валерия
кандидат психологических наук, старший лектор, Школа здоровья и социальной работы, Университет Линкольна, г. Линкольн
vcarroll@lincoln.ac.uk

Методологические проблемы диагностики процесса смыслообразования у личностей с различными системами религиозных убеждений 

Аннотация
В статье освещаются трудности диагностики процесса смыслообразования у религиозных людей и проблема разработки новых оценочных инструментов. Как утверждают авторы, эмпирические методы, широко известные в психологии личности, построены и основываются на светских выборках и неприложимы для изучения процесса смыслообразования у лиц с различными системами религиозных убеждений. Психологам следует конструировать методы, которые были бы лишены недостатков опросников и дали бы возможность зафиксировать смыслообразование в его сложности, нелинейности и динамике. В этом мог бы помочь междисциплинарный подход.

Ключевые слова
процесс смыслообразования, диагностика смыслообразования, система религиозных убеждений, методы диагностики смыслообразования.

__________

For the last years the progressive increase of migrant populations all over Europe including the UK and Russia has facilitated erosion of old forms of religiosity and the formation of new ones, with special meaning systems. One would agree that meaning-making process is core to person’s well-being; however academics and practitioners still struggle to identify methods, which help them to capture the meaning making of individuals with various religious belief systems as a complex, dynamic and nonlinear mental process. The article is aimed to describe these methodological dilemmas of assessing the meaning-making process among individuals with various religious belief systems.

Existing differences in design and methods, methodological limits, and focusing on one or two aspects of meaning making, etc. [23] create methodological dilemmas in assessment; empirical studies lag far behind rich conceptual developments, and operational definitions – from well-developed theoretical constructs [6, 25, 31]. Due to this, academics and practitioners feel a lack of a valid method to explore meaning making as a complex, dynamic and multidimensionality mechanism. The implementation of such innovative methods will allow them to identify individual differences in meaning-making systems among individuals with various religious belief systems.

The complexity of focusing on studying religious and spiritual meanings is related to heterogeneity in meaning structures [24]. Religious meaning making can lead to positive consequences – coping with distress and painful troubles [11, 15, 18] or to negative ones – pessimistic religious interpretations that complicates physical diseases [20]. As it was found in studies, beliefs and religious practices themselves have a special ability to provide ultimate meaning [21], however, as it was found in a study, a verbally expressed religious orientation is not connected with the level of meaning in life directly [8, 10].

The literature analysis shows that overwhelming majority of the existing measuring tools directed to assessment of meaning structures is based on self-reported questionnaire methods (e.g., “Purpose in Life Test” (PIL) [3], “The Meaning in Life Questionnaire” (MIL) [28], “The Schedule for Meaning in Life Evaluation” (SMiLE) [12], “Life Regard Index” (LRI) [7], “The Seeking of Noetic Goals Test” (SONG) [4], etc.) and has substantial limitations and shortcomings. Questionnaire methods:

• are more focused on the diagnosis of separated components of global meaning systems (beliefs/goals/subjective sense of meaningfulness; see the model of life meaning by C. Park [22]);
• do not cover dynamics of meaning making, its complexity and nonlinearity;
• can impose categories in advance, labeling complex mental acts of respondents and make capturing “lived” meaningful experiences impossible;
• do not reflect the social conditions of the meaning-making process;
• are not culturally free and are based on studies of people who live in economically and politically developed countries with high level of education and social responsibilities.

In addition, trying to measure “meaning in life”, researchers often measure a sense of meaning in life or of goal-directedness [1].

Many research studies lose the social and cultural background of the meaning-making process. However, this aspect is very important: global meaning systems are usually constructed unwittingly, acquired from the surrounding culture (including parents, media, and other cultural agents), through accumulated personal life experience [1, 27], and tend to remain outside of people’s awareness [1, 26]. In conducting their studies, researchers remain aware of the strong influences that culture exerts on the global meaning systems of individuals, including their religious meanings [e.g., 29]. Nevertheless, measures of religiousness sometimes do not reflect sensitivity to cultural variables [ 2].

One might argue that there are already specifically constructed measuring tools targeted at meaning-making domains of individuals with various religious belief systems, however the few that are available measure not so much the meaning-making process, as much as meaning systems and hence are aimed at a slightly different task. For example, they are: the subscale “Religious Methods of Coping to Find Meaning” within the method “RCOPE” [19], the subscale “Existential Well-Being” within “Spiritual Well-Being Scale” [17]. Despite the special focusing on the category of believers, these techniques are also not devoid of the described shortcomings of the questionnaires.

P.C. Hill & K.I. Pargament pointed out the limitations of self-report methods when studying religious subjects:

1. Some aspects of religion and spirituality may be inadequately measured because they are difficult to articulate through closed-ended questions.
    
2. Religion and spirituality may be especially susceptible to a social desirability bias.
    
3. Such scales may require reading levels beyond the ability of children, poorly educated adults, and some clinical populations.
    
4. Some paper-and-pencil measures may be boring or disengaging, thereby fostering a potential response set bias [14].

Taking into account an interest of researchers who study meaning systems in religious and non-religious contexts to dynamic processes [30], psychologists have to develop methods that will reconstruct meaning-making process of respondents with various religious belief systems and corresponding forms of religiosity, to avoid the shortcomings of questionnaires. Interdisciplinary perspectives on the problem of adequate understanding of meaning making allow us to highlight an aspect such as the applicability of the methods to the study of contemporary forms of religiosity.

Contemporary sociologists and scientists of religion show that the traditional forms of religiosity and religious identity with well-defined meaning systems are being transformed in the context of globalization and migration. So, the phenomenon of “religiosity without belonging” is captured in the United Kingdom [5]. Other researchers describe phenomena of diffuse or indefinite religiosity: “bricolage” [13], “patchwork-religiosität” [33], “mixed religiosity” [9], etc. Hence, traditional cross-cultural and cross-confessional paradigm with its comparative view becomes inadequate in studies of meaning making because “cross-sectional designs are limited as they do not capture changes in meaning overtime” [23, p. 499]. Thus, the developers of innovative methods are recommended to apply an interdisciplinary approach that allows the making of such assessing instruments, which can be used by psychologists, psychotherapists, social workers, health care workers, sociologists and scientists of religion to solve various problems: adaptation of immigrants to new life circumstances through meaning making, enhancing the resilience, well-being and life satisfaction of persons who are in crisis or who are in search for meaning.

If we consider the meaning-making process as a product of an individuals’ cultural development in their social environment, L.S. Vygotsky’s socio-cultural theory can be performed as a good example of implementation of the interdisciplinary approach.

From the standpoint of L.S. Vygotsky’s theory [32], the meaning systems are formed through assimilation of verbal and non-verbal signs which start to mediate mental functions in the process of child’s cultural development. Assimilated signs become cultural tools which individuals use in his or her meaning making. Meaning systems are derived from the individual’s actual life relations based on cultural meanings and value templates previously learned from society [16]. Application of socio-cultural theory suggests an original approach in developing new methods to explore the meaning making of persons having various religious beliefs in the context of the cultural tools that they have assimilated. According to this, we propose to analyze the assessing capabilities of the methods among representatives of different religious groups in dissimilar cultural environments, where they are both a confessional majority and a minority.

Taking into account all of the above, we can draw some conclusions about the current state of assessing methodologies of the meaning making of individuals with various religious belief systems:

1. Empirical methods widely known in psychology of personality (e.g., PIL, MIL, SMiLE, LRI, SONG, etc.) are constructed and based on secular samples and are not suitable for studying the meaning-making process of people with religious beliefs: without capturing specifically religious meanings, they give a simplified, biased or distorted picture of believers’ meaning systems. New methods that are going to be developed in the future must be applicable and relevant to individuals with various religious belief systems.
    
2. Psychologists have to construct methods, which eliminate the shortcomings of the questionnaires, and make the capturing of the meaning making in its complexity, nonlinearity and dynamism possible. The methods do not have to reduce substantially the complex processes of the meaning making to simple ones, but to reconstruct them in the form in which they proceed.
    
3. If to apply interdisciplinary approach to development of the new assessing instruments, in particular L.S. Vygotsky’s socio-cultural theory, the innovative methods has to take into account the historical, social and cultural context of the meaning-making process of believers. The methods have to consider cultural mediation of meaning-making processes, and so therefore will be applicable to studying religious persons with various social characteristics.
    
4. Existing approaches to measuring the meaning making of a believer are based on traditional forms of religiosity. The new methods have to be adapted to capturing the modern non-standard forms of religiosity and the corresponding meaning systems.

Literature

1. Park, C. L. & George, L. S. (2013). Assessing meaning and meaning making in the context of stressful life events: Measurement tools and approaches. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 8(6), 483–504.

2. Davis, C. G., Wortman, C. B., Lehman, D. R., & Silver, R. (2000). Searching for meaning in loss: Are clinical assumptions correct? Death Studies, 24, 497–540.

3. Schlegel, R. J. & Hicks, J. A. (2017). Reflections on the scientific study of meaning in Life. Journal of Constructivist Psychology, 30, 26–31.

4. Thompson, S. C., & Janigian, A. S. (1988). Life schemes: A framework for understanding the search for meaning. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 7, 260–280.

5. Park, C. L. (2017). Distinctions to promote an integrated perspective on meaning: Global meaning and meaning-making processes. Journal of Constructivist Psychology, 30(1), 14–19.

6. Emmons, R. A., Colby, P. M, & Kaiser, H. A. (1998). When losses lead to gains: Personal goals and the recovery of meaning. In P. T. P. Wong & P. S. Fry (Eds.), The human quest for meaning (pp. 163–178). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

7. Krok, D. (2015). Religiousness, spirituality, and coping with stress among late adolescents: A meaning-making perspective. Journal of Adolescence, 45, 196–203.

8. Pargament, K. I. (1997). The psychology of religion and coping. New York: Guilford Press.

9. Pargament, K. I., Koenig, H. G., Tarakeshwar, N., & Hahn, J. (2001). Religious struggle as a predictor of mortality among medically ill elderly patients: A two-year longitudinal study. Archives of Internal Medicine, 161, 1881–1885.

10. Pargament, K. I., Magyar, G. M., & Murray-Swank, N. (2005). The sacred and the search for significance: Religion as a unique process. Journal of Social Issues, 61(4), 665–687.

11. Dvoinin, A. M. (2011). Smyslozhiznennye orientatsii religioznoy lichnosti [Meaning of life orientations of a religious person]. Bulletin of St. Tikhon’s Orthodox University. (Issue IV “Pedagogy. Psychology”), 22(3), 139–151.

12. Dvoinin, A. M. (2013). Value and meaning orientations of the religious individual. In H. Westerink (Ed.), Constructs of meaning and religious transformation (pp. 297–316). Vienna: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht unipress.

13. Crumbaugh, J. C., & Maholick, L. T. (1964). An experimental study in existentialism: The psychometric approach to Frankl’s concept of noogenic neurosis. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 20, 200–207.

14. 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, 80–93.

15. Fegg, M., Kramer, M., l’Hoste, S., et al. (2008). The Schedule for Meaning in Life Evaluation (SMiLE): Validation of a new instrument for meaning-in-life research. Journal of Pain and Symptom Management, 4, 356–363.

16. Debats, D. L. (1998). Measurement of personal meaning: The psychometric properties of the Life Regard Index. In P. T. P. Wong & P. S. Fry (Eds.), The human quest for meaning (pp. 237–259). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

17. Crumbaugh, J. C. (1977). The Seeking of Noetic Goals Test (SONG): A complementary scale to the Purpose in Life Test. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 88(8), 900–907.

18. Park, C. L. (2005). Religion and meaning, In R. F. Paloutzian & C. L. Park (Eds.), Handbook of Psychology of Religion and Spirituality (pp. 295–314). New York: Guilford Press.

19. Baumeister, R. F. (1991). Meanings of life. New York: Guilford Press.

20. Singer, J. L., & Salovey, P. (1991). Organized knowledge structures and personality: Person schemas, self schemas, prototypes, and scripts. In M. Horowitz (Ed.), Person schemas and maladaptive interpersonal patterns (pp. 33–79). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

21. Silberman, I. (2005). Religion as a meaning system: Implications for the new millennium. Journal of Social Issues, 61(4), 641–663.

22. Tarakeshwar, N., Stanton, J., & Pargament, K. I. (2003). Religion: An overlooked dimension in cross-cultural psychology. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 34, 377–394.

23. Chatters, L. M., Taylor, R. J., & Lincoln, K. D. (2002). Advances in the measurement of religiosity among older African Americans: Implications for health and mental health researchers. In J. H. Skinner & J. A. Teresi (Eds.), Multicultural measurement in older populations (pp. 199–220). New York: Springer.

24. Pargament, K. I., Koenig, H. G., & Perez, L. M. (2000). The many methods of religious coping: Development and initial validation of the RCOPE. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 56, 519–543.

25. Paloutzian, R. F., & Ellison, C. W. (1982). Loneliness, spiritual well-being, and quality of life. In L. A. Peplau & D. Perlman (Eds.), Loneliness: A sourcebook of current theory, research and therapy (pp. 224–236). New York: Wiley.

26. Hill, P. C., & Pargament, K. I. (2003). Advances in the conceptualization and measurement of religion and spirituality. American Psychologist, 58, 64–74.

27. Taves, A. (2016). [Methods Series] On the virtues of a meaning systems framework for studying nonreligious and religious worldviews in the context of everyday life. URL: https://nsrn.net/tag/the-meaning-systems-framework/#_ednref25 [Data obrashcheniya 01.12.2017]

28. Davie, G. (2002). Europe: The exceptional case. Parameters of faith in the modern world. London: Darton, Longman and Todd.

29. Hervieu-Léger, D. (2006). In search of certainties: The paradoxes of religiosity in societies of high modernity. The Hedgehog Review, 8(1-2), 59–68.

30. Wuthnow R. (2007). America and the Challenges of Religious Diversity. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

31. Dvoinin, A. M., & Danilova, G. I. (2012). Psikhologicheskoe issledovanie religioznosti sovremennoy pravoslavnoy molodiozhi [Psychological research of the religiosity of modern Orthodox youth]. Bulletin of St. Tikhon’s Orthodox University. (Issue IV “Pedagogy. Psychology”), 25(2), 131–137.

32. Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in Society. The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Edited by M. Cole, V. John-Steiner, S. Scribner & E. Souberman. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

33. Leontiev, D. A. (2005). Three Facets of Meaning. Journal of Russian and East European Psychology, 43(6), 45–72.

Рекомендовано к публикации:
Е.В.Пискунова, доктор педагогических наук, член Редакционной коллегии

Литература

1. Park, C. L. & George, L. S. (2013). Assessing meaning and meaning making in the context of stressful life events: Measurement tools and approaches. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 8(6), 483–504.

2. Davis, C. G., Wortman, C. B., Lehman, D. R., & Silver, R. (2000). Searching for meaning in loss: Are clinical assumptions correct? Death Studies, 24, 497–540.

3. Schlegel, R. J. & Hicks, J. A. (2017). Reflections on the scientific study of meaning in Life. Journal of Constructivist Psychology, 30, 26–31.

4. Thompson, S. C., & Janigian, A. S. (1988). Life schemes: A framework for understanding the search for meaning. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 7, 260–280.

5. Park, C. L. (2017). Distinctions to promote an integrated perspective on meaning: Global meaning and meaning-making processes. Journal of Constructivist Psychology, 30(1), 14–19.

6. Emmons, R. A., Colby, P. M, & Kaiser, H. A. (1998). When losses lead to gains: Personal goals and the recovery of meaning. In P. T. P. Wong & P. S. Fry (Eds.), The human quest for meaning (pp. 163–178). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

7. Krok, D. (2015). Religiousness, spirituality, and coping with stress among late adolescents: A meaning-making perspective. Journal of Adolescence, 45, 196–203.

8. Pargament, K. I. (1997). The psychology of religion and coping. New York: Guilford Press.

9. Pargament, K. I., Koenig, H. G., Tarakeshwar, N., & Hahn, J. (2001). Religious struggle as a predictor of mortality among medically ill elderly patients: A two-year longitudinal study. Archives of Internal Medicine, 161, 1881–1885.

10. Pargament, K. I., Magyar, G. M., & Murray-Swank, N. (2005). The sacred and the search for significance: Religion as a unique process. Journal of Social Issues, 61(4), 665–687.

11. Двойнин, А. М. (2011). Смысложизненные ориентации религиозной личности. Вестник Православного Свято-Тихоновского гуманитарного университета. (Серия IV. Педагогика. Психология), 22(3), 139–151.

12. Dvoinin, A. M. (2013). Value and meaning orientations of the religious individual. In H. Westerink (Ed.), Constructs of meaning and religious transformation (pp. 297–316). Vienna: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht unipress.

13. Crumbaugh, J. C., & Maholick, L. T. (1964). An experimental study in existentialism: The psychometric approach to Frankl’s concept of noogenic neurosis. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 20, 200–207.

14. 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, 80–93.

15. Fegg, M., Kramer, M., l’Hoste, S., et al. (2008). The Schedule for Meaning in Life Evaluation (SMiLE): Validation of a new instrument for meaning-in-life research. Journal of Pain and Symptom Management, 4, 356–363.

16. Debats, D. L. (1998). Measurement of personal meaning: The psychometric properties of the Life Regard Index. In P. T. P. Wong & P. S. Fry (Eds.), The human quest for meaning (pp. 237–259). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

17. Crumbaugh, J. C. (1977). The Seeking of Noetic Goals Test (SONG): A complementary scale to the Purpose in Life Test. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 88(8), 900–907.

18. Park, C. L. (2005). Religion and meaning, In R. F. Paloutzian & C. L. Park (Eds.), Handbook of Psychology of Religion and Spirituality (pp. 295–314). New York: Guilford Press.

19. Baumeister, R. F. (1991). Meanings of life. New York: Guilford Press.

20. Singer, J. L., & Salovey, P. (1991). Organized knowledge structures and personality: Person schemas, self schemas, prototypes, and scripts. In M. Horowitz (Ed.), Person schemas and maladaptive interpersonal patterns (pp. 33–79). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

21. Silberman, I. (2005). Religion as a meaning system: Implications for the new millennium. Journal of Social Issues, 61(4), 641–663.

22. Tarakeshwar, N., Stanton, J., & Pargament, K. I. (2003). Religion: An overlooked dimension in cross-cultural psychology. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 34, 377–394.

23. Chatters, L. M., Taylor, R. J., & Lincoln, K. D. (2002). Advances in the measurement of religiosity among older African Americans: Implications for health and mental health researchers. In J. H. Skinner & J. A. Teresi (Eds.), Multicultural measurement in older populations (pp. 199–220). New York: Springer.

24. Pargament, K. I., Koenig, H. G., & Perez, L. M. (2000). The many methods of religious coping: Development and initial validation of the RCOPE. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 56, 519–543.

25. Paloutzian, R. F., & Ellison, C. W. (1982). Loneliness, spiritual well-being, and quality of life. In L. A. Peplau & D. Perlman (Eds.), Loneliness: A sourcebook of current theory, research and therapy (pp. 224–236). New York: Wiley.

26. Hill, P. C., & Pargament, K. I. (2003). Advances in the conceptualization and measurement of religion and spirituality. American Psychologist, 58, 64–74.

27. Taves, A. (2016). [Methods Series] On the virtues of a meaning systems framework for studying nonreligious and religious worldviews in the context of everyday life. URL: https://nsrn.net/tag/the-meaning-systems-framework/#_ednref25 [Дата обращения 01.12.2017]

28. Davie, G. (2002). Europe: The exceptional case. Parameters of faith in the modern world. London: Darton, Longman and Todd.

29. Hervieu-Léger, D. (2006). In search of certainties: The paradoxes of religiosity in societies of high modernity. The Hedgehog Review, 8(1-2), 59–68.

30. Wuthnow R. (2007). America and the Challenges of Religious Diversity. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

31. Двойнин, A. M., Данилова, Г. И. (2012). Психологическое исследование религиозности современной православной молодежи. Вестник Православного Свято-Тихоновского гуманитарного университета. (Серия IV. Педагогика. Психология), 25(2), 131–137.

32. Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in Society. The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Edited by M. Cole, V. John-Steiner, S. Scribner & E. Souberman. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

33. Leontiev, D. A. (2005). Three Facets of Meaning. Journal of Russian and East European Psychology, 43(6), 45–72.