ABSTRACT
Several researchers have examined the possibility of a connection between “religion” and attitudes toward death and dying, typically hypothesizing a negative relationship between religiosity and death anxiety. This chapter addresses some of the shortcomings of research in the area by utilizing two different multidimensional measures of death anxiety and a sample confined to a specific age range. The impact of differing samples is perhaps best illustrated by comparing the results of two studies, both of which used a multidimensional measure of death anxiety and a relatively sophisticated measure of religion, the Intrinsic Religious Motivation Scale (IRM). The first hypothesis was that subjects with high scores on the IRM Scale would report significantly higher levels of death anxiety than subjects with relatively low scores on the IRM scale. The second hypothesis was that subjects with low scores on the faith development interview would report significantly higher levels of death anxiety than would subjects with relatively high scores on the faith development interview.
