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. 2024 May 22:15:1398620.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1398620. eCollection 2024.

Death anxiety and religiosity in a multicultural sample: a pilot study examining curvilinearity, age and gender in Singapore

Radiah Maria Belak  1 , Kay Hee Goh  1
Affiliations

Death anxiety and religiosity in a multicultural sample: a pilot study examining curvilinearity, age and gender in Singapore

Radiah Maria Belak et al. Front Psychol. .

Abstract

This study investigated the association between multidimensional death anxiety and religiosity in multicultural Singapore by examining potential variations by age and gender. We also explored the possibility of a curvilinear effect, where highly religious or non-religious individuals report lower death anxiety than moderately religious people, forming an inverted U-curve pattern. Data were collected from 110 participants using questionnaires that assessed death anxiety and religiosity. Parametric and non-parametric tests were then conducted. The findings showed that women had significantly higher death anxiety and religiosity than men, and highly and moderately religious people had significantly higher death anxiety than non-religious people. People of all age groups had similar levels of death anxiety. These findings highlight the importance of developing targeted death anxiety interventions that integrate spiritual aspects in Singapore so that clinicians can provide culturally competent care.

Keywords: death and dying; death anxiety; existentialism; religiosity; spirituality; transdiagnostic construct.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
The inverted U-curve association between DA and religiosity.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Normality test results for DA and gender.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Normality test results for DA and religiosity.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Normality test results for DA and age.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Normality test results for religiosity and age.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Normality test results for religiosity and gender.
Figure 7
Figure 7
(A) One-way ANOVA descriptive statistics for DA and religiosity. (B) One-way ANOVA Levene’s test results for DA and religiosity. (C) One-way ANOVA test results for DA and religiosity.
Figure 8
Figure 8
(A) Post-hoc Tukey HSD multiple comparisons test results for DA and religiosity. (B) Post-hoc Tukey HSD homogeneous subsets test results for DA and religiosity.
Figure 9
Figure 9
(A) Independent-samples Kruskal-Wallis descriptive statistics for DA and age. (B) Independent-samples Kruskal-Wallis ranks test results for DA and age. (C) Independent-samples Kruskal-Wallis test statistics for DA and age.
Figure 10
Figure 10
(A) The chi-square cross-tabulation test results for religiosity and age. (B) The chi-square test results for religiosity and age.
Figure 11
Figure 11
(A) The chi-square cross-tabulation test results for religiosity and gender. (B) The chi-square test results for religiosity and gender.
Figure 12
Figure 12
(A) Independent samples t-tests group statistics for DA and gender. (B) Independent samples t-tests results for DA and gender.
Figure 13
Figure 13
The relationship between religiosity and DA visualized in a tree diagram. This tree diagram is a visualization of the broad ways in which religiosity can be divided. It does not attempt to capture the full spectrum of religiosity, which may consist of various combinations of the factors in the diagram, nor is it an attempt to simplify religiosity into a linear process. Instead, it aims to provide a brief overview of the general trends of DA across different expressions of religiosity.
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