Date of Award
2000
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Psychology
Abstract
Viktor Frankl's logotheory proposes that personal meaning in life and the attitudes people hold toward their own subjective mortality play important mediating roles in the way individuals choose to view and conduct their lives. The purpose of this study was to test the effectiveness of Frankl's existential model in explaining problem drinking among college women by determining whether there are group differences in personal meaning and death attitudes as a function of alcohol consumption patterns. The sample consisted of 154 college women whose patterns of alcohol consumption allowed for participant classification into one of three groups: (a) non-drinkers (n = 40), (b) non-problem drinkers (n = 57), and (c) problem drinkers (n = 57). Measures of personal meaning and death attitudes were obtained for each group using the Personal Meaning Profile (PMP) and Death Attitude Profile-Revised (DAP-R). Results from two MANOVAs and an ANOVA revealed no statistically significant group differences on any of the eight PMP and five DAP-R subscales. Results from a stepwise discriminate function analysis revealed that a discriminant function composed solely of the Religion factor of the PMP was the most efficient in discriminating between the criterion groups. However, only about nine percent of the variance in the dependent variable, group membership, was explained by differences in the PMP Religion factor.
Recommended Citation
Nolan, Christopher Hugh, "Alcohol Consumption Patterns, Death Attitudes, And Personal Meaning Among College Women" (2000). All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 761.
https://scholars.indianastate.edu/etds/761