Meaning-Making Following Spinal Cord Injury: Individual Differences and Within-Person Change

Objective: Several studies of people coping with trauma or loss suggest that finding meaning in one's experience predicts better adjustment. However, these studies assume that meaning is a stable individual-difference construct. We assess the temporal stability of searching for and finding meaning in a sample of people with spinal cord injury (SCI), and test the effect of change in searching and finding meaning on depressive affect, subjective well-being (SWB), and perceived growth. Method: Sixty-seven adults with SCI were interviewed on 3 occasions over the first 13 months of their injury. Results: Searching for and finding meaning are moderately stable over time. Multilevel analyses indicated that in addition to between-person effects of searching for and finding meaning on depressive symptoms and well-being, there was also evidence of within-person effects of searching for and finding meaning, such that more frequent searching was associated declines in adjustment, whereas increases in found meaning were associated with improved adjustment. Finding meaning, at both the between-person and within-person levels, was associated with greater perceived growth, but such growth was not associated with depressive symptoms or SWB. Conclusions: The within-person analyses demonstrate that meaning-making is a process that is not necessarily linear yet is important for understanding the process of adaptation for many people coping with SCI.