The Meaning in Work Inventory: Validation of the Italian version and its association with sociodemographic variables

This paper introduces the Meaning in Work Inventory (ME-Work), a psychometric scale formed by examining meaning in work theories in analogy with the meaning in life research evidence. The ME-Work is a modular questionnaire aimed to assess three independent aspects of meaning in work, i.e., work as a source meaning (module 1), meaningful and meaningless work (module 2), and facets of meaning in work, namely, coherence, significance, purpose and belonging (module 3). An Italian sample of 624 participants completed a survey regarding personal and organizational characteristics in addition to the ME-Work. Both confirmatory analysis and structural equation modelling have been used to respectively assess psychometric properties of the Italian version of the ME-Work and the associations of the three modules. A series of MANOVAs examined socio-demographic differences in ME-Work dimensions. The contribution ends by discussing the results and limitations of the study. Further avenues for research and practice are presented.