ED414532 CG028192

 

Title:A Scale To Measure the Development of Children's Concepts of Death.
Author(s): Cuddy-Casey, Maria; Orvaschel, Helen; Sellers, Alfred H.
Pages: 5
Publication Date: August 1997
Notes: Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Psychological Association (105th, Chicago, IL, August 15-19, 1997).
Available from: EDRS Price MF01/PC01 Plus Postage.
Language: English
Document Type: Reports--Research (143); Speeches/meeting papers (150)
Geographic Source: U.S.; Florida
Journal Announcement: RIEMAY1998

The sporadic investigations regarding children's concepts of death have lacked standard methods or instruments for evaluating these conceptions. Whether or not research on children's concepts of death can be gauged by a standard set of questions is explored in this paper. It reports on the evaluation of a new questionnaire's (Concept of Life and Death Questionnaire (CLDQ)) psychometric properties and uses this instrument to investigate children's conceptions of death. The preliminary 20 item CLDQ was developed and administered to 50 subjects from ages 7 to 12 years. Results of item analyses indicate that a revised 12-item CLDQ had adequate internal consistency for the overall conceptualization of death, as well as the specific subconcepts of death. Findings suggest that age, cognitive functioning, and exposure to death were not found to be significantly related to the overall concept of death, although age was related to two subconcepts of death. Understanding of death is, therefore, somewhat contingent on chronological age in that children progressively learn that all things die, and subsequently, how they die. It is argued that the revised CLDQ offers an efficient means of gauging children's concepts of death. (RJM)

Descriptors: *Attitude Measures; *Childhood Attitudes; Children; *Construct Validity; *Death; Elementary Education; *Reliability; Test Validity
Identifiers: Suicide Ideation