| The purpose of the present study was to develop and validate an instrument designed to assess older adolescents' perceptions of certain types of loss following the death of someone they knew. Study One piloted a measure to determine whether the proposed types of loss existed in an older adolescent population and if they could be reliably measured. Exploratory factor analysis found that 11 of the 15 proposed types of loss clustered on to two larger factors which were named Loss of Relationship and Loss of Worldview. Study Two aimed to refine the measure, test through confirmatory factor analysis whether the same factor structure fit data from a new sample, to demonstrate the temporal stability of the measure, and to provide evidence of instrument validity. Study Two demonstrated that a shorter version of the instrument could still reliably tap perceptions of loss and that these perceptions were relatively stable over a two-to-three week period. Confirmatory factor analysis showed that the proposed model fit the data, but so did a competing model. Validity assessments showed that while the Types of Loss Questionnaire (TLQ) shared a good deal of variance with other measures of emotional grief reactions, it still makes sense to conceptually distinguish cognitive and emotional responses. The predicted patterns of associations with other variables were not always found. This may be due to the fact that many of the predictions came from the literature on emotional grieving rather than cognitive grieving. Implications, limitations, and directions for future research are discussed. |
