This descriptive, correlational study was undertaken to determine the relationship between self-esteem and reported mourning behavior as it pertains to loneliness in young adults who, as children, had experienced parental death. A sample of 184 males and females between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five years completed the four questionnaires that were the research instruments. Data were analyzed using hierarchical multiple regression and Pearson product-moment correlation coefficients. Analysis of the data revealed that self-esteem was the single best predictor of loneliness and that reported mourning behaviors significantly added to the prediction of variance in loneliness.
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