Fear of death: Empirical research into the demographic and socio -cultural variables contributing to death anxiety

Studies have found that fear of death is influenced by age, gender, income, education, quality of life, culture, experience of death, and religiosity. However, the literature contains conflicting results between studies. Additionally, research on fear of death has not employed instrumentation to assess cultural identity or to measure subjects' satisfaction with everyday life. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to provide additional inquiry into the potential influences of demographic and socio-cultural variables on fear of death using similar variables to past research as well as a world view scale and a quality of life scale. Moreover, this study proposed a model of fear of death in the attempt to determine how demographic variables impact socio-cultural variables and the degree to which learned socio-cultural variables affect instinctual levels of fear of death. One hundred five subjects from churches in the San Francisco Presbytery of the Cascades completed a survey consisting of 192 questions. The survey was composed of: a demographic questionnaire, the Quality of Life scale, the Scale to Assess World View, the Model of Differential Impact of Death Experience, the Dimensions of Religiosity scale, and the Revised Fear of Death Scale. Percentages and Pearson correlations were computed to measure the hypothesized relationships between variables in this study. Support was found for the hypothesized relationships between demographic and socio-cultural variables with fear of death. These results were consistent with the preponderance of the research on fear of death. Lastly, the statistical results in this study did not support the proposed model of fear of death.