Development of an evaluation instrument for subjects related to death

Abstract

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to develop an evaluation instrument integrated and interdisciplinary death education for the human service areas such as nursing, social welfare, and education and to test the reliability and validity of it. METHOD: The subjects used to verify the instrument's reliability and validity were 407 students who were enrolled in the departments of nursing, social welfare, and education in universities located in Seoul, Pusan, Daegu, and Daejeon. The data was collected from April to May, 2005, and was analyzed by SPSS/WIN 12. RESULT: A factor analysis was conducted. Items with over a .40 factor loading and over a 1.0 eigen value were selected. Nine identified factors were learning about death, role of professionals, personal attitudes, hospice care, ethics and legal issues, death and dying, spiritual aspect of death, transcultural aspect of death, and multidisciplinary theory of death. The instrument consisted of 44 items and the reliability was a cronbach's of .953. CONCLUSION: Based on the study results, the content scale developed in this study was identified as a tool with a high degree of reliability and validity.