The Death Education at School Questionnaire: Theoretical Assumptions and Psychometric Properties

Abstract

This paper presents theoretical assumptions and psychometric properties of the Death Education at School Questionnaire (DESQ): a brief instrument that allows to measure attitudes toward human-centered death education as an element of school education. The participants were 375 university students – education and teaching majors. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses confirmed a two-factor structure of the DESQ, with two sub-scales: (1) Openness toward the presence of death education in a school and (2) Humanistic Basis of Death Education. Reliability of both sub-scales was acceptable and they significantly correlated with measures of attitudes towards death and human-centered school education. We posit that the DESQ can be used to measure adult education participants’ beliefs in death education and its place in school education on primary and secondary school levels.