Quest and Identity Development: Re-Examining Pathways for Existential Search

This article examines key assumptions underlying quest as a mature religious orientation rooted in existential struggles. Quest is posited by Batson and his colleagues to be an inherently meaningful search in the face of life's challenges. Moreover, Quest is seen to operate across the lifespan...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Klaassen, Derrick W. (Author) ; MacDonald, Marvin J. (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group 2002
In: The international journal for the psychology of religion
Year: 2002, Volume: 12, Issue: 3, Pages: 189-200
Online Access: Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
Parallel Edition:Electronic
Description
Summary:This article examines key assumptions underlying quest as a mature religious orientation rooted in existential struggles. Quest is posited by Batson and his colleagues to be an inherently meaningful search in the face of life's challenges. Moreover, Quest is seen to operate across the lifespan independently of the developmental search for identity. Accordingly, quest's relationships with key variables should be mediated by personal meaning but not by identity development. Wong's Personal Meaning Profile and Adams's Extended Objective Measure of Ego Identity Status were used to explore mediation of the relationship between quest (as measured by the Quest scale) and spiritual well-being (as measured by the Spiritual Well-Being Scale [SWBS]). The Quest-SWBS relation was partially mediated by personal meaning and identity development in a sample of 160 university students. These results and their implications for quest are discussed in light of Marcia's identity status theory and Wong's model of personal meaning.
ISSN:1532-7582
Contains:Enthalten in: The international journal for the psychology of religion
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1207/S15327582IJPR1203_05