Discrepancies Regarding Death Anxiety Essay

Death Anxiety Discrepancies Between Variables: Does Ethnicity Stand Entirely? As persons age, they may get down asking about the patterned advance of their lives and may get down to recognize that decease is inevitable ; these ideas may force get down them to develop anxiousnesss about it. Along with age, the clip spent sing this fact will besides change with one ‘s ethnicity. As people have longer life anticipations, there has been increased attending drawn to age related casualties ( Thorson, 1994 ) . The epoch of the babe roar marked the highest birth rates to day of the month in history, and persons born during this roar are now nearing retirement age ( Fava, 1998 ) . Along with retirement may come the impressions of heartache ( Depaola, 2003 ) ; heartache that may be followed by anxiousness, specifically decease anxiousness ( Cicirelli, 1998 ) .  Discrepancies Regarding Death Anxiety Essay.The frights that these grownups have about decease can frequently slop into how they feel about other factors, including the quality of their lives ( Tomer, 2000 ) . Past surveies have shown mention to persons non categorized as being older as besides holding cases where their decease anxiousness degrees were rather high ( Russac, 2007 ) .

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The issue of age being a clear index of decease anxiousness is one that remains with high contention. Age does non hold a high correlativity one time one discovers a concrete comprehension of decease ( Neimeyer, 1988 ) . Death is an event that can be defined and divided by many abstracts. Although decease is cosmopolitan, its significances are eternal. In the sense, decease is the expiration of all parts in an being, the stoping of the connexion between head and organic structure ( Maurer, 1996 ) . Some people believe that decease takes topographic point when the bosom stops whipping, while others believe that decease occurs when the elusive consciousness eventually leaves the organic structure to travel to the following life ” ( Death & A ; Dying ) . Although this is in fact true, there have been no anterior surveies corroborating these findings. On the contrary, there have been surveies that have shown a negative correlativity between the addition in age and degrees of decease anxiousness ( Keller, 1984 ; Neimeyer, 1988 ) .
Over clip nevertheless, research workers have started to see a different tendency. Typically, higher degrees of anxiousness are found in younger persons, followed by a crisp slope in in-between maturity which so remains changeless until one reaches the aged phase, when the degrees decrease significantly and stabilise ( Gessar, 1988 ) . Discrepancies Regarding Death Anxiety Essay.
Ethnicity could besides play a primary function in an person ‘s decease anxiousness. Presently, there are non many surveies that are consistent at turn outing or confuting this claim. One ground for such incompatibility could be that in anterior surveies, the consequence of ethnicity was non investigated as a exclusive variable ( Bengtson et al. , 1977 ; Davis, 1978 ) . In past old ages, there was a survey conducted in which decease degrees was measured against one ‘s ethnicity and relation to decease. The sample used both work forces and adult females from four different ethnicity groups. The consequences of the survey specified that Hispanic and African American participants had higher degrees of decease anxiousness in comparing to the Caucasic and Nipponese American participants. Less than two decennaries subsequently another effort was made to seek to contract down the difference between one ‘s ethnicity and his/her gender ( Cicirelli, 1998 ) .
By utilizing the Multidimensional Fear of Death graduated table, Cicirelli ‘s consequences showed that although the Caucasic male participants had higher degrees of decease anxiousness than African American males on one graduated table ( fright of go forthing others behind ) , on another the graduated table, ( which measured anxiousness of witting decease ) the antonym was true ; the African American male participant ‘s degrees were higher.
Restrictions in the research antecedently conducted are that the research surveies defined decease from one abstraction. Different factors can act upon one ‘s degree of decease anxiousness and should be taken into consideration. Discrepancies Regarding Death Anxiety Essay. There should be some signifier of appraisal that could break place what precisely is doing an person to hold a lessening or spike in their anxiousness degrees in correlativity to decease.
The intent of this probe is to pull more attending on the issue that there are non a batch of surveies presently out which can turn out a correlativity between one ‘s degree of decease anxiousness and their age and demographics together. As a continuance of this, one ‘s decease anxiousness has more to make with his/her ethnicity regardless of age. Prior surveies have tried but none have conducted an experiment including all three factors. All of the probes from old surveies have tried to find participant ‘s degree of decease anxiousness with two correlativities. This probe will further look at different persons from all three vantage points ( variables ) by construing the appraisals given during the pilot survey. This appraisal will be confirmed with the consequences provided by a questionnaire given to the participants. The questionnaire will take into consideration certain factors and appendages which could impact one ‘s natural fright of decease. Exposure to decease could be a premier illustration, i.e. mensurating high offense vicinities to low offense vicinities ( Immarino, 1975 ) .Discrepancies Regarding Death Anxiety Essay.  Consequences will demo that ethnicity is the chief factor in decease anxiousness and the other two variables, although really of import, will yield to it when the factor is present. The ground that ethnicity will play the primary function in finding decease anxiousness is because with one ‘s ethnicity comes stressors attributed specifically to this. These stressors will in bend cause an person to hold higher emphasis degrees in comparing to another person of an ethnicity without such stressors. This survey is of import because one time there are clear cut facts on how ethnicities influence decease anxiousness, steps can be taken to take down this overall correlativity.
Method
Participants
The sample consisted of 300 persons. Of the participants, 150 were immature grownups ( 18-40 old ages old ) and 150 were older grownups ( over 40 old ages old+ ) Participants were recruited by a convenience sampling, from two counties of a peculiar province. Participants were assigned via random digit dialing every bit good as from advertizements dispersed both on the web and in individual. Participants who completed the questionnaire were reimbursed for their travel disbursals, every bit good as given a 20 dollar verifier. An ideal sample size would include participants from different educational backgrounds. Pilot inquiries were given before the start of the questionnaire which included general demographic inquiries that determined one ‘s SES degree every bit good as their degrees of general wellness, anxiousness, and depression.Discrepancies Regarding Death Anxiety Essay.  Participants who had any signifier of mental upset from mild to severe were excluded from the sample due to the fact that they were shortly released after the initial pilot inquiries. The pilot inquiries given were able to state if the participants had any type of mental upset. The participants who fell into this class were still given the pecuniary verifier for volunteering their clip.
Materials
The Multidimensional Fear of Death Scale is a questionnaire in which participants answer 42 Likert-type inquiries about themselves and their degrees of decease anxiousness ( MFODS ; Hoelter, 1979 ; Neimeyer & A ; Moore, 1994 ) . The inquiries ranged from holding a fright of go forthing others behind after decease to the fright of the existent manner in which one will decease. Those 42 inquiries so interrupt down into subscales mensurating one ‘s fright of witting decease by 8 phases. The 8 stages/factors are as followed ;
F1: Fear of the Dying Process ( ex. I am afraid of a painful decease. )
F2: Fear of the Dead ( ex. I am afraid of graveyards. )
F3: Fear of Being Destroyed ( ex. I am a registered organ giver. [ Reverse scored ] )
F4: Fear for Significant Others ( ex. I am afraid of my partner deceasing. )
F5: Fear of the Unknown ( ex. I am afraid of traveling to heaven/hell. )
F6: Fear of Conscious Death ( ex. I am afraid to decease by submerging. )
F7: Fear for the Body after Death ( ex. I am afraid of how my corroded organic structure will look. )
F8: Fear of Premature Death ( ex. I am afraid of deceasing before my parents/ kids. )
Participants responded to each inquiry on a graduated table from 1 strongly hold ” with the factors, and 5 which is strongly disagree ” . The test-retest correlativity of the entire Multidimensional Fear of Death Scale is.85 ( Neimeyer & A ; Moore, 1994 ) . The internal dependability coefficients for the eight factors are.75 ( Hoelter, 1979 ; Walkey, 1982 ) . There was besides a good prognostic cogency every bit good.
Participants besides completed the Anxiety Sensitivity Index ( ASI ) , which measures anxiousness based on 16 Likert-type inquiries. Discrepancies Regarding Death Anxiety Essay. Each of the 16 inquiries can be answered by a figure runing from 0 to 4, with 0 bespeaking a little sum of anxiousness, and 4 bespeaking a high degree of anxiousness. The ASI ‘s test-retest dependability at r=.74 ( Reiss et al. , 1986 ) . The internal consistence coefficients range from.82 to.91 ( Peterson & A ; Reiss, 1993 ) , and has a good prognostic cogency ( Reiss, 1991 ) .
Procedure
The participants were recruited by a convenience sampling process which resulted in a random per centum of age and gender every bit good as ethnicity. Participants were informed of this survey by flyers and advertizements posted online every bit good as throughout the two counties in which the survey surveyed. Participants were besides selected through random digital dialing, a beginning which was provided by the local telephone company database. After the participants signed the informed consent papers and had any inquiries about the survey answered, the pilot inquiries were administered. The pilot inquiries contained demographic information such as race, age, sex, profession, matrimonial position and figure of kids. Another set of inquiries were asked to find the participant ‘s mental wellness position and to see if they were on any type of medicine. To mensurate this, the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-Being Scale was used. The WEMWBS showed good content cogency and high test-retest dependability r=0.83 ( Tennant, 2006 ) . After the pilot inquiries were completed, the MFOD and ASI graduated tables were administered. The survey was based on a correlational cross-sectional design. Two groups participated ; those in the younger grownup class and those in the older grownup class. The factors consisted of gender, ethnicity, and the highest degree of instruction completed. The process will be conducted in a room with merely the person. Participants will be handed an uncertain envelope with their package and be told to seal the papers upon finishing the assignment. Once the undertaking is done, the participants are free to go forth the room.
Consequences
The initial hypothesis of this survey was that degrees of decease anxiousness would change significantly with ethnicity despite one ‘s age group. A t-test was used to analyse the differences between the younger and older groups of participants on a self-reported decease anxiousness trial. Another step used to back up this claim was the Multidimensional Fear of Death Scale. This graduated table compared the decease anxiousness between two different age groups. There was no considerable difference between the two groups ( see Table 1 ) .
To mensurate whether or non different ethnicities are correlated with decease anxiousness, an analysis of discrepancy was used ( ANOVA ) . Discrepancies Regarding Death Anxiety Essay. The ANOVA showed that for the bulk of the subdivisions on the MFODS trial, Caucasic participants scored lower than all other ethnicities across the board, followed shortly by Asiatic American participants. The consequences of each ethnicity were similar within the participants, which can be inferred as age non playing a premier factor. The significance between age groups and ethnicity was non every bit big as the significance between two ethnicities as a whole. Ethnicities that are seen as embracing the minority were the 1s that experienced high degrees of decease anxiousness in relation to the MFOD scale norm ( see Table 2 ) .
Table 1
Meanss and Standard Deviations: Multidimensional Fear of Death Scale
____________________________________________________________________
Measure Mean SD
_____________________________________________________________________
MFODS ( immature n=150 ) XX X.X
MFODS ( old n=150 ) XX X.X
_____________________________________________________________________
Table 2
Multidimensional Fear of Death Scale ; Death Anxiety of Different Ethnicities
__________________________________________________________________ ___
Caucasic African American Latino American Asiatic American F ( n=101 ) ( n=68 ) ( n=45 ) ( n=86 )
_____________________________________________________________ _
MFODS Total XX ( X.X ) XX ( X.X ) XX ( X.X ) XX ( X.X ) Ten
F1-Fear of Diing XX ( X.X ) XX ( X.X ) * XX ( X.X ) XX ( X.X ) Ten
F2-Fear of the XX ( X.X ) XX ( X.X ) XX ( X.X ) XX ( X.X ) Ten
Dead
F3-Fear of Bing XX ( X.X ) XX ( X.X ) XX ( X.X ) * XX ( X.X ) Ten
Destroyed
F4-Fear of XX ( X.X ) XX ( X.X ) * XX ( X.X ) XX ( X.X ) Ten
Significant Other
F5-Fear of the XX ( X.X ) XX ( X.X ) XX ( X.X ) XX ( X.X ) * Ten
Unknown
F6-Fear of XX ( X.X ) XX ( X.X ) XX ( X.X ) XX ( X.X ) Ten
Consciousness
When Dead
F7-Fear for Body XX ( X.X ) XX ( X.X ) XX ( X.X ) XX ( X.X ) * Ten
After Death
F8-Fear of
Premature XX ( X.X ) * XX ( X.X ) XX ( X.X ) XX ( X.X ) Ten
Death
______________________________________ ______________________________
*p & lt ; .05
Discussion
The intent of this survey was to compare degrees of decease anxiousness between immature and old participants of different cultural groups. The result from this probe gave back uping grounds which showed that age was non a direct correlativity with the participants in their overall response to the degrees of decease anxiousness. There was a little addition penchant of males over females but the findings were non important. Another consequence from the survey indicated that African Americans had higher degrees of decease anxiousness than any of the groups tested. Their anxiousness was somewhat more than the Latino Americans but more than dual that of the Caucasian group. The decease anxiousness degrees of the Asiatic American group were rather similar with the Caucasian group, but their consequences fell somewhat higher. The achieved consequences were consistent with the initial hypothesis, which stated that degrees of decease anxiousness would change significantly with ethnicity despite one ‘s age group.
Upon administrating the Multidimensional Fear of Death Scale, the findings from the pilot survey gave insight that there were barely any differences between the sexes of both age groups. This determination supports the old survey completed by Fortner and Neimeyer ( 1999 ) , which argued that gender is non a proper variable in finding decease anxiousness. Their survey looked at other steps, one being the societal economic position of the participants.Discrepancies Regarding Death Anxiety Essay.  By including the ages of the participants in the current survey, the informations significantly contrasted that of an earlier survey which claimed that there was no correlativity between age and decease anxiousness ( Conte et al. , 1982 ) . The research so done did non include participants from different age groups. Not including such can impede the pureness of the consequences. Non-inclusion of the latter should non give clearance for saying that there is no correlativity between the two. In comparing the ethnicities between the participants, the consequences supplied were besides consistent with an older survey done which claimed that African Americans had the highest degrees of decease anxiousness in comparing to all other ethnicities ( Barresi & A ; Stull, 1993 ) . Strengths of this survey contribute to the cognition base in the sense that until now, no other survey has together compared decease anxiousness to one ‘s age sex and ethnicity. Before now, surveies merely tried to happen significance between two of the variables. Including all three can give an penetration in detecting if any of the variable consequences were baffled because of another variable influencing it.

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In add-on to looking at the function of ethnicity, another strength of this survey is sample size. Having a larger sample size reduces the opportunity of participant mistake. With more participants, it is more likely to see a tendency either upward or downward in retrospect to the steps being observed. Three hundred participants can in fact be good in the sense that with such a big sample single differences are more likely to decrease.
A restriction on this current research is the fact that the bulk of the consequences of the survey come from self-reported steps. Because of this, there is ever traveling to be the opportunity that the consequences are non one hundred per centum accurate. In order for this to one twenty-four hours no longer be an issue, upcoming research workers need to make a method that can short-circuit self-reporting processs. A possible option could be to detect participants in their natural scene such as in the workplace, or place scene i.e. household based, or nursing/ retirement place. Doing such could bring forth more reliable consequences. Another restriction is the procedure of how the participants were selected. Bing that the method used was a convenience sampling, the participants involved could perchance non be a direct representation of the population being sampled. This is the instance because the survey merely used participants drawn from two counties of a peculiar province. Discrepancies Regarding Death Anxiety Essay.
Future surveies can widen on the current research by besides including the participants self-esteem degrees. Self-esteem is known to somewhat act upon one ‘s degree of decease anxiousness and his/her overall quality of life ( Ben-Ari & A ; Findler, 2005 ) . Knowing how an single falls on the self-esteem graduated table can farther alarm medical functionaries on how to react on a instance by instance footing. Puting aside the variables of gender and ethnicity, if more research was available to analyze decease anxiousness it could besides turn out as a important step for nursing places. Therapies could in fact become developed to cut down overall degrees amongst all ethnicities. If these degrees were lowered there could be possibilities that one ‘s perceptual experience on quality of life would increase, doing longer life spans. Last, research demands to go on in order for there to be a better apprehension of decease anxiousness and the factors that influence/ suppress it. Once this is developed, decease anxiousness degrees and the stressors behind it should be come nonexistent. Discrepancies Regarding Death Anxiety Essay.