Abstract
How an elderly people meets death is the matter of how he has lived his life. It is very important for an elderly people at the last step of his life to re-light up life and to meet death with dignity. The purpose of this study is to investigate where fear or anxiety of death come from among the four dimensins of death anxiety and to compare the differenced between the elderly group and non-elderly group, For this research, the 473 of the subjects from 20 to 80 years old attending social welfare center and community areas in Seoul have been questionned. The summary for the study mentioned the following: First, the overall scores of death anxiety, in the non-aged group, gender and religiosity are important factors affecting the decrease of death anxiety, On the other hand, in the aged group, self-respect, death readiness and number of friends are significant factors. Secondly, for death anxiety of self, age and spouse are significant relationships among non-aged group and gender, death readiness and number of friends for aged-group. In the dying of self, the following each three significant variables: gender, self-respect and spouse among non-aged group and gender, self-respect and number of friends among aged group. In death anxiety of others, age, view on next world and spouse are best predictor for non-aged group. Finally, family-relationship, self-respect and spouse are significant factors for aged group. In dying of others, only one factors are influenced for non-aged group, on the other hand, gender, self-respect and death readiness are important factors for aged group. There remains the need for more detailed examination into the nature of this relationship and the extent to which core components strongly affecting the above subscales.
