Attitudes towards Death in a Group of Adolescents and Young Adults in the City of Bucaramanga

Abstract

The objective of this transverse correlational study was to explore attitudes towards death and their association with several sociodemographic variables (gender, occupation and marital status). A non-probability sampling method was applied with a group of 150 adolescents and 150 young adults, all residents of the city of Bucaramanga in Colombia. Those who were surveyed had experienced the death or chronic or terminal illness of a loved one for a period of more than six months. PAM-R was used to explore attitudes towards death (Cronbach’s Alpha = 0.893). The procedure included application of the instrument at public sites in the city, with prior informed consent. The data were processed with spss 15.0 software. The results showed attitudes of fear and acceptance of impending death in both groups. The two groups showed weak correlations between attitudes towards death and age (r<-0.132), socio-economic status (0.013< r<-0.0181) and level of schooling (0.084<0.119). Gender differences were found among the young adults in their attitude ofacceptance of impending death (t=3.607) with p<0.05 and in marital status, in avoidance of death (t=3.439) with p<0.05 and acceptance of escape (t=2.414) with p<0.05. The conclusion is that attitudes towards death are fear and acceptance, and this ambivalence is different in each stage of development.