Death Attitudes among Mid-Life Women

Abstract

The relationships between death anxiety, age, developmental concerns, and socioeconomic status were analyzed using a sample of seventy-four women ages thirty through forty-nine who had recently returned to the university. Templer's death anxiety scale as well as a thematic apperception procedure were employed to measure attitudes about death. Concurrent and construct validation of the direct and indirect measures of death yielded different, often complementary results. The factor analysis revealed seven factors–death concern, death anticipation, death as loss, death in physical terms, death as depressing, death denial, and death as a dimension of time–that accounted for 50 percent of the variance. When these factors were used in the regression analysis, developmental factors were the salient issues with death concern, death as interpersonal loss, and death as a dimension of time; age was the sole predicator of death anticipation; and death denial and income were significant with death as physical. No variable predicted death as depressing. These results revealed the multidimensionality of death attitudes and the significance of considering both developmental and socioeconomic influences in predicting death attitudes. In addition, by using indirect as well as direct measures of death, various dimensions of the death construct were identified.