Doctoral Dissertations

Date of Award

8-1982

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Education

Major Professor

Robert H. Kirk

Committee Members

Velma W. Pressly, Robert K. Roney, Bill C. Wallace

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to assess the personal concern about and knowledge of death and dying among future health educators. The subjects were selected from 29 institutions offering undergraduate degrees in health education and located within the Southern District of the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance. Two previously validated instruments, Eddy's Knowledge Test of Death and Dying (KTDD) and Dickstein's Death Concern Scale (DCS), were mailed, along with a Personal Data Sheet (PDS), to the subjects who were all junior or senior health education and/or health and physical education majors.

From the returned test instruments (n = 288) demographic data were determined, the KTDD and DSC were scored, and various hypotheses were tested using one way analyses of variances. From the analysis it was found that: (1) the KTDD and DCS scores were not correlated; (2) the subjects were not very knowledgeable about death and dying, as evidenced by the low mean score on the KTDD; (3) most subjects had a medium level of concern about death; (4) race and sex of the subjects influenced the scores on both the DCS and KTDD; (5) most subjects were white (69%), female (57%) and between 18-23 years of age (74%); (6) most had experienced the death of a close one (58%) and attended a funeral (69%) within the last three years; (7) 61% had received no formal death education instruction; and (8) Protestant (72%) was the most often stated religious preference and 61% attended religious services several times a month or more often.

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