1. Objectifs

Intentions :
«Le but de la présente étude est d’explorer les perceptions des parents face à la compréhension des jeunes enfants […] vis-à-vis [de] la mort, comment ils adressent le sujet de la mort avec leurs enfants, et ce que leurs enfants comprennent à ce sujet.» (p. iv)

2. Méthode

Échantillon/Matériau :
«A total of 57 (n males= 29) children participated in this study, and were between the ages of 3 years 1 month and 7 years 12 months (Mage= 4.86, SD= 1.41; see Table 1). Additionally, children’s primary caregivers also participated in the study (N= 57). Participating parent-child dyads resided in the region of Montreal and all participants spoke English.» (p. 27)

Instruments :
Questionnaires

Type de traitement des données :
Analyse de contenu
Analyse statistique

3. Résumé

«The current results indicate that parents do address a range of death-related concepts when conversing with their young children about death. It is also indicated that a child’s level of fear may influence the types of death-related concepts discussed. Finally, results suggest that there is a significant positive relationship between parent perception and child understanding of death (p = .029).» (p. iii) «Results also revealed that dyads with children categorized as having a high level of fear were significantly more likely to refer to the following death categories: Negative Evaluation, Nonexistence, and Comfort (see Table 5). Furthermore, results revealed that parents were accurate judges of their children’s understanding of death, with parents’ perception of their child’s understanding significantly positively correlated with their child’s actual understanding of death.» (p. 37)