The study of personal constructs of death and fear of death among Taiwanese adolescents.

Résumé

This study administered an open-ended questionnaire about death and the Multidimensional Fear of Death Scale (MFODS) to explore the relationships between personal constructs about death and fears of death among Taiwanese adolescents. The sample included 329 adolescents in junior and senior high school grades 7 to 12. A coding manual was used to conduct content analysis of death constructs in paragraphs about death written by respondents, and the MFODS was used to measure fear of death. The results revealed that concepts and fears about death differed significantly according to grade, gender, religion, death-related experiences, and death-related discussions in the family. Constructs regarding negative emotional states, as well as low levels of attachment, emerged as significant predictors of the seven MFODS subscales. Generalization of these results to other populations merits further investigation.