Euthanasia attitude; a comparison of two scales
,
Abstract
The main purposes of the present study were to see how the term "euthanasia" influences people's support for or opposition to euthanasia; and to see how euthanasia attitude relates to religious orientation and personality factors.
In this study two different euthanasia attitude scales were compared.
197 students were selected to fill out either the Euthanasia Attitude Scale (EAS) or Wasserman's Attitude Towards Euthanasia scale (ATE scale). All participants filled out 50 items of International Personality Item Pool, 16 items of the The HEXACO openness, and 14 items of Religious Orientation Scale-Revised.
Results indicated that even though the two groups were not different in terms of gender, age, education, religiosity and personality, mean score on the ATE scale was significantly higher than that of the EAS. Euthanasia attitude was negatively correlated with religiosity and conscientiousness and it was positively correlated with psychoticism and openness.
It can be concluded that analyzing the attitude towards euthanasia with the use of EAS rather than the ATE scale results in lower levels of opposition against euthanasia. This study raises the question of whether euthanasia attitude scales should contain definitions and concepts of euthanasia or they should describe cases of it.
Grassi L, Magnani K, Ercolani M. Attitudes toward euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide among Italian primary care physicians. J Pain Symp Manag 1999; 17(3): 188-96.
Cohen J, Marcoux I, Bilsen J, Deboosere P, van der Wal G, Deliens L. European public acceptance of euthanasia: Socio-demographic and cultural factors associated with the acceptance of euthanasia in 33 European countries. Soc Sci Med 2006; 63: 743-56.
Chong AM, Fok S. Attitudes toward euthanasia in Hong Kong-a comparison between physicians and the general public. Death Stud 2005; 29: 29-54.
Karadeniz G, Yanikkerem E, Pirincci E, Erdem R, Esen A, Kitapcioglu G. Turkish health professional’s attitude toward euthanasia. Omega 2008; 57(1): 93-112.
Wasserman J, Clair JM, Ritchey FJ. A scale to assess attitudes toward euthanasia. Omega 2005; 51(3): 229-37.
Rogers JR. Assessing right to die attitudes: a conceptually guided measurement model. J Soc Issues 1996; 52(2): 63- 84.
Ramabele T. Attitudes of the elderly towards euthanasia: A cross-cultural study. [dissertation]. South Africa. University of the Free State; 2004.
Muller-Busch HC, Oduncu FS, Woskanjan S, Klaschik E. Attitudes on euthanasia, physician-assisted suicide and terminal sedation- A survey of the members of the German Association for Palliative Medicine. Med Health Care Philos 2004; 7(3): 333-39.
Singer P. Practical Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 1999.
McInerney F. “Requested death”: a new social movement. Soc Sci Med 2000; 50: 137-54.
McInerney F. Heroic frames: discursive constructions around the requested death movement in Australia in the late-1990s. Soc Sci Med 2006; 62: 654-67.
Jeffrey D. Against Physician Assisted Suicide: A Palliative Care Perspective. Oxon: Redcliffe; 2009.
Sharma BP. The end of life decisions – should physicians aid their patients in dying? J Clin Forensic Med 2004; 11: 133-40.
O’Neill C, Feenan D, Hughes C, McAlister DA. Physician and family assisted suicide: results from a study of public attitudes in Britain. Soc Sci Med 2003; 57: 721-31.
Parkinson L, Rainbird K, Kerridge I, et al. Cancer patients’ attitudes towards euthanasia and physician assisted suicide: the influence of question wording and patients’ own definitions of euthanasia. J Bioeth Inq 2005; 2(2): 82-9.
Eliott JA, Olver IN. Dying cancer patients talk about euthanasia. Soc Sci Med 2008; 67: 647-56.
Aghababaei N, Hatami J, Rostami R. The role of individual characteristics and judgment pattern in attitude towards euthanasia. Iran J Crit Care Nurs 2011; 4(1): 23-32.
Aghababaei N, Farahani HA. Acceptance of euthanasia and the role of Individual characteristics. Abstract Book of the 1st Congress of Medical Ethics in Iran. Tehran University of Medical Sciences; 2010. (in Persian)
Ghorbani N, Ghramaleki AF, Watson PJ. Philosophy, self-knowledge, and personality in Iranian teachers and students of philosophy. J Psychol 2005; 139(1): 81-95.
Ghorbani N, Watson PJ, Gharamaleki AF, Morris RJ, Hood Jr RW. Muslim-Christian Religious Orientation Scales: distinctions, correlations, and cross-cultural analysis in Iran and the United States. Int J Psychol Relig 2002; 12(2): 69-91.
Palahang H, Neshatdoost H, Moolavi H. Standardization of revised HEXACO Personality Inventory (HEXACO-PI-R) in Iranian students. J Psychol 2010; 4(16): 48-66. (in Persian)
Wasserman J, Clair JM, Ritchey FJ. Racial differences in attitudes toward euthanasia. Omega 2006; 52(3): 263-87.
Goldberg LR. A broad-bandwidth, public domain, personality inventory measuring the lower-level facets of several five-factor models. In: Mervielde I, Deary I, De Fruyt F, Ostendorf F, eds. Personality Psychology in Europe. The Netherlands: Tilburg University Press; 1999; 7: p. 7-28.
Goldberg LR, Johnson JA, Eber HW, et al. The international personality item pool and the future of public-domain personality measures. J Res Pers 2006; 40: 84-96.
Ashton MC, Lee K. The HEXACO–60: a short measure of the major dimensions of personality. J Pers Assess 2009; 91(4): 340-45.
Ashton MC, Lee K. Empirical, theoretical, and practical advantages of the HEXACO model of personality structure. Pers Soc Psychol Rev 2007; 11(2): 150-66.
Hill PC. Religious Orientation Scale-Revised (Gorsuch & McPherson, 1989). In: Hill PC, Hood Jr, RW, (eds). Measures of Religiosity. Birmingham: Religious Education Press; 1999, p. 154-6.
Ryynanen OP, Myllykangas M, Viren M, Heino H. Attitudes towards euthanasia among physicians, nurses and the general public in Finland. Public Health 2002; 116: 322-31.
Seale C. Hastening death in end-of-life care: a survey of doctors. Soc Sci Med 2009; 69: 1659-66.
Cavlak U, Aslan UB, Gurso S, Yagci N, Yeldan I. Attitudes of physiotherapists and physiotherapy students toward euthanasia: a comparative study. Adv Ther 2007; 24(1): 135-45.
Kitchener BA. Nurse characteristics and attitudes to active voluntary euthanasia: a survey in the Australian Capital Territory. J Adv Nurs 1998; 28(1): 70-6.
Ganzini L, Beer TM, Brouns MC. Views on physician-assisted suicide among family members of Oregon cancer patients. J Pain Symptom Manage 2006; 32(3): 230-6.
Löfmark R, Nilstun T, Cartwright C, et al. Physicians' experiences with end-of-life decision-making: survey in 6 European countries and Australia. BMC Med 2008; 6(4): 1-8.
Lisker R, Alvarez Del Rio A, Villa AR, Carnevale A. Physician-assisted death. Opinions of a sample of Mexican physicians. Arch Med Res 2008; 39: 452-8.
Miccinesi G, Fischer S, Paci E, et al. Physicians’ attitudes towards end-of-life decisions: a comparison between seven countries. Soc Sci Med 2005; 60: 1961-74.
Flere S, Lavric M. Is intrinsic religious orientation a culturally specific American Protestant concept? The fusion of intrinsic and extrinsic religious orientation among non-Protestants. Eur J Soc Psychol 2008, 38: 521-30.
Tiliopoulos N, Bikker AP, Coxon APM, Hawkin PK. The means and ends of religiosity: a fresh look at Gordon Allport’s religious orientation dimensions. Pers Individ Dif 2007; 42: 1609-20.
Carpenter TP, Marshall MA. An examination of religious priming and intrinsic religious motivation in the moral hypocrisy paradigm. J Sci Study Relig 2009; 48(2): 386-93.
Bülow HH, Sprung CL, Reinhart K, et al. The world’s major religions’ points of view on end-of-life decisions in the intensive care unit. Intensive Care Med 2008; 34: 423-30.
Lester D, Hadley RA Lucas WA. Personality and a pro-death attitude. Pers Individ Differ 1990; 11(11): 1183-5.
Saroglou V. Religion and the five factors of personality: a meta-analytic review. Pers Individ Differ 2002; 32: 15-25.
Saroglou V. Religiousness as a cultural adaptation of basic traits: a five-factor model perspective. Pers Soc Psychol Rev 2010; 14(1): 108-25.
Horsfall S, Alcocer C, Duncan CT, Polk J. Views of euthanasia from an east Texas university. Soc Sci J 2001; 38: 617-27.
Tavousian A, Sedaghat M, Aramesh K. Investigating attitude towards euthanasia in interns of Tehran University of Medical Sciences. J Med Ethics Hist Med 2008; 1(3): 43-51. (in Persian)
Rastegari Najaf Abadi H, Sedaghat M, Saeedi Tehrani S, Aramesh K. Euthanasia: nurses perspective in teaching hospitals of Tehran University of Medical Sciences. J Med Ethics Hist Med 2010; 3(5): 37-44. (in Persian)
| Files | ||
| Issue | Vol 4 (2011) | |
| Section | Articles | |
| Keywords | ||
| Euthanasia, Attitude towards euthanasia, Personality. | ||
| Rights and permissions | |
|
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. |
