Edward E. Waldrep's 2011 Kent State master's thesis develops and tests the Meaning Self-Efficacy Scale (MSE), a brief measure of a person's perceived ability to generate meaning after traumatic life events. The work treats meaning-making as a dynamic, self-regulatory process that may help bridge the gap between searching for meaning and finding meaning after trauma.
The source is an 82-page Kent State University Master of Arts thesis by Edward E. Waldrep, dated May 2011, with Joel W. Hughes, PhD listed as advisor. The title page and approval page support the identity trail from B.A. University of Colorado at Colorado Springs 2008 to M.A. Kent State University 2011.
- Waldrep framed meaning self-efficacy as perceived ability, not as an objective proof that someone has found meaning.
- The thesis developed an initial 19-item MSE pool and reduced it to a 9-item measure.
- The studies found convergent validity with coping self-efficacy and expected negative relationships with posttraumatic distress, but the reduced MSE did not explain unique posttraumatic-distress variance after social support was controlled in Study 2.
- The thesis treats self-efficacy beliefs as malleable and potentially useful for clinical attention, while emphasizing the need for further validation.
- It does not study K-12 students, school-board governance, SEL curricula, DEI, gender policy, parental-rights policy, or school library policy.
- It does not show that schools should replace SEL with academic challenge or character programs.
- It does not establish that emotion-focused education is harmful.
- It does not prove that public-policy claims can be derived from the MSE measure.
- The MSE was intended to assess perceived ability to generate meaning after trauma.
- Study 1 used undergraduate participants and reported good internal consistency for the 19-item scale, a strong positive correlation with coping self-efficacy, and a negative correlation with posttraumatic distress.
- Study 2 supported a two-factor reduced measure: Generating Meaning and Perceived Meaning.
- Study 2 found that social support predicted less posttraumatic distress, while MSE did not add significant unique explanatory power after social support.
- Study 3 examined short-term test-retest reliability and left temporal stability as a future-validation issue.
- The thesis repeatedly treats trauma response as heterogeneous: not everyone exposed to trauma develops substantial distress, and not every traumatic event requires a search for new meaning.
- Edward E. Waldrep
- Kent State University
- Joel W. Hughes
- Douglas Delahanty
- meaning self-efficacy
- coping self-efficacy
- social cognitive theory
- meaning-making
- posttraumatic distress
- posttraumatic growth
- social support
- psychological measurement
- 2008: B.A., University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, listed on approval page.
- 2011: M.A., Kent State University, and thesis submission.
| Source |
Target |
Mechanism |
Flow |
Evidence strength |
Source basis |
| Edward E. Waldrep |
Kent State University |
Master's thesis submission |
Academic credential / research record |
direct evidence |
thesis title and approval pages |
| MSE |
posttraumatic distress |
psychometric correlation / regression testing |
measurement signal, not causation |
direct evidence |
Study 1 / Study 2 methods and results |
The strongest public-comparison cue is that the thesis presents self-efficacy as domain-specific, malleable, and contextual. Public rhetoric that treats confidence or resilience as simply the result of individual challenge should be compared against the thesis's narrower measurement and clinical-caution frame.
¶ Evidence limits and open questions
- The samples were largely undergraduate / sub-clinical and not the clinically distressed populations where the author expected the MSE might be most useful.
- The thesis itself calls for comparison with established meaning-in-life measures, prospective studies, clinical populations, and confirmatory factor analysis.
- The MSE construct may be relevant to public rhetoric about confidence and resilience, but only as a conceptual comparison, not as direct policy evidence.
outputs/reports/eddie-waldrep-academic-public-statements-comparison.mdoutputs/data/eddie-waldrep-academic-public-comparison/academic_concepts_matrix.csv
- Self-efficacy concept page not yet materialized.