Is there a relationship between meaning-in-life, valued-living, social support, bereavement experience and death competence?

Objectives: Awareness of factors associated with death competence offers researchers and practitioners insights to inform, further explore and develop interventions. The purpose of this cross-sectional study was to further our understanding of how meaning-in-life, valued-living, social support and bereavement experience are associated with death competence. Method: In 2018, enrolees in a Massive-Online-Open-Course to foster community conversations on death were invited to participate in a research study. N=231 participants (91% female, mean age 54.5 years) completed the following online surveys during the introductory week of the course: Meaning Life Questionnaire (MLQ), Valued Living Questionnaire (VLQ), Medical Outcomes Study-Social Support Survey (MOS-SSS), Coping with Death Scale (CDS), plus sociodemographic and bereavement experiences. Results: Findings indicated that presence of meaning-in-life and death competence were strongly positively-correlated while search for meaning-in-life produced a small negative-association. Greater valued-living and social-support both produced small-moderate positive bivariate associations with death competence, as did greater age and spirituality. Bereavement experience did not moderate the association between the life-related variables (MLQ, VLQ, and MOS-SSS) and death competence. Presence of meaning-in-life had the strongest unique relationship with death competence scores in the multiple regression. Conclusions: The findings of this study suggest that meaning-in-life and our ability to cope with death are indivisibly related and that increasing meaning-in-life may potentially help build one’s death competence. Alongside this, as valued-living increases, meaning-in-life increases which supports developing interventions to not only increase meaning-in-life but also increase valued-living where death competence is sought. This study found the greater one is living their life in line with their values and the greater their sense of meaning in life, the higher their perceived death competence. Future research could investigate if developing valued-living experiences in people can increase meaning-in-life, which subsequently builds perceived death competence.