What is Meaning of Life and How is it Developed? A Qualitative Study with Iranian University Students

Question of meaning, is a kind of inquiry that has occupied people’s mind. Answering this question that fits in a place between philosophy and psychology, many experts have tried to clarify this ambiguous concept. The aim of this study is to explore two questions about meaning of life by a phenomenological lens.

The present study was a qualitative research using latent thematic analysis method. The research performed semi-structural interviews in 5 focus groups with 33 participants and investigated college view of points about nature and development of meaning in life. The six phase strategy of Brown and Clark (2006) was used to extract themes.

After analyzing the results, two main themes, six themes and 12 subthemes were extracted. The main themes are: Nature of meaning and Development of meaning. The themes are: Need for Cohesion, Desire for Immortality, Meaning as a Scale, Livelihood Meaning, Epistemological Meaning, and Experiential Meaning. The subthemes are: Durability in the Another world, Durability via create Benefits, Living Everyday life, Living in Barrier of norms, Evasion of Thinking and Abstraction, Comfort and Benefit, Search for meaning, Creating meaning, Expansion of meaning, Imbalance, Seeking balance, and balance Discovery.

Study results show a new perspective to build training protocols based on meaning of life in student population.