title: Death: the ultimate social construction of reality.
abstract: Using Berger and Luckmann's thesis (1966) on the social construction of reality as rationale, this research analyzes the death drawings of 946 university students enrolled in a Death and Dying course between 1985 and 2004 to investigate the basic constructs elicited by the word "death": dying, moment of death, after death, after life, and bereavement. Consistent with earlier research, gender, race, religion, and religiosity proved to be significant factors. As expected, personal experience with grief was strongly correlated with drawings focused on bereavement. In contrast to earlier studies, fear of death was not significantly related to a particular construct. Implications for research, education, and counseling are discussed.
authors.affiliation: University of Louisiana at Lafayette, USA. sbrabant@bellsouth.net
authors.forename: Sarah
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Brabant
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001293:Attitude to Death; D003466:Cultural Characteristics; D005006:Ethnicity / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D005260:Female; D006117:Grief; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D012069:Religion and Psychology; D020377:Self Efficacy; D012945:Social Values; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014481:United States; D055815:Young Adult