Data Set for: The Evolution of ‘Meaning in Life’: A Historical Narrative Review

This dataset assists as the evidentiary foundation for the historical narrative review which delineates the conceptual and empirical trajectory of the ‘meaning in life’ construct. The dataset specifies the 85 seminal sources selected for the review, as per the PRISMA-ScR (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews) guidelines. The selection process of these sources has been identified in the article’s methodology section. The primary objective of this data collection is to bridge the "genealogy gap" that frequently fragments classical philosophical origins from modern psychometric operationalisation. The synthesis tracks the transition from theistic to metaphysical operationalizations of the term to the psychologically measurable conceptualizations in order to report a coherent chronicle of the construct’s evolution. The discovery method utilised iterative "forward and backward citation tracking" (snowballing) to ensure that the bibliographic trails from ancient antiquity to contemporary multi-dimensional models were meticulously preserved.