Development of a Scale to Measure Death Perspectives: Overcoming and Participating.

Kastenbaum and Aisenberg have suggested that persons can cope with the impact of death and dying by altering their understanding of what each means to them as well as by changing their behavioral responses to such experiences. The present study's purpose was to develop a reliable and valid measure to assess an individual's particular death perspective based on Kastenbaum and Aisenberg's distinctions between overcomers and participators. The Death Perspective Scale developed here assessed the extent to which individuals utilize either an overcoming or participating approach to (a) assigning meaning to dying and death and (b) behaviorally responding to death-related experiences. Based upon the data collected from 168 adults varying by age and gender, findings suggested that both overcoming and participating could be reliably assessed, correlated with measures of death anxiety and death attitudes, and varied reliably (p < .05) by age and gender, wherein such differences were for the most part consistent with predictions by Kastenbaum and Aisenberg espoused over 30 years ago. Findings here suggested that overcomers reported more fear of death and dying and were less accepting in this respect, while participators reported fewer death-related fears and were more accepting. Women and older adults were more participating, while men and younger adults were more overcoming, though such effects varied depending upon whether meaning versus response to death was considered. The consistency between the present findings and the predictions Kastenbaum and Aisenberg suggests that while person's orientations to death and dying seem to transcend sociocultural change, empirically based efforts to better understand how our death system impacts persons need to move forward.

The "How" and "When" of Parental Loss in Adulthood: Effects on Grief and Adjustment.

In order to evaluate the role of cause of death on the grief responses of parentally bereaved young and middle-aged adults, 400 individuals completed measures assessing their experiences and feelings surrounding the loss of a parent. Respondents included 247 young adults and 155 middle-aged adults. Cause of death was categorized as acute or anticipated with 209 participants reporting the parent's death as acute, while anticipated death was reported by 191 individuals. Results suggested that gender of the adult child and age level of the participant were important factors contributing to the grief response, and women were found to have more difficulty adjusting to the loss of a parent as well as demonstrating a more intense grief response. Young adults were found to be more impacted by the loss of a parent than were middle-aged adults. Those who were single or separated were similarly more impacted versus those who were married, where more young adults were single/separated and more middle-aged adults were married. Cause of death was only mildly influential in influencing responses to parental loss and did not interact with other studied variables. These results point to the importance of support from others in coping with a parent's death as well as for the counseling of bereaved persons who may be at risk for difficulties in coping with the death of a parent and enable a more precise understanding of individual grief processes across the adult lifespan.

Employee age and reactions to downsizing.

The present study explored the career development concerns among employees varying by age who had worked for organizations that either had or had not engaged in downsizing within a 1-year timeframe. The sample consisted of 72 layoff survivors and 92 non-survivors (employees whose organizations had not downsized). Each completed an online survey assessing career concerns framed in the context of Super's Life Span Life Space theory of career development, as well as measures assessing perceptions of loss, job insecurity, distress, social support, loss history, religiosity, and job satisfaction. Younger employees reported more job dissatisfaction, as did survivors, and younger survivors reported more such dissatisfaction relative to older survivors, and saw the downsizing as less equitable than did older survivors. Among non-survivors, age effects were minimal. Younger employees reported more concerns about Crystallization, Specification, Implementation, Innovation, Stabilizing, Consolidating, Advancing, and Updating, as did survivors. For Crystallization, and to a lesser extent for Innovation, younger survivors reported more such concerns than did older survivors, while among non-survivors, these differences were minimal. A similar age by survivorship pattern was found for psychophysical health, career-recycling tendencies, and for concerns at Super's career stages/maxicycles of Exploration, Establishment, and Maintenance. These findings suggest that young survivors appear to be less vocationally adaptable, more vocationally and personally vulnerable to downsizing, and more impacted in seeing downsizing as unfair, perhaps due to unrealistic career trajectory expectations. In contrast, older employees, perhaps due to increased job and/or layoff experience or the perception that downsizing was handled more equitably via greater loyalty to the organization, appear to be more resilient in these respects.