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A New Instrument to Assess Children’s Understanding of Death: Psychometrical Properties of the EsCoMu Scale in a Sample of Spanish Children
The acquisition of the death concept in children may influence how these children cope with the losses that they will confront throughout their lives. At the present time, there is a lack of psychometric instruments in Spanish-speaking countries in order to evaluate the components of the death conce...
Autores principales: | , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
MDPI
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7916254/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33572418 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/children8020125 |
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author | Fernández-Alcántara, Manuel de los Santos-Roig, Macarena Pérez-Marfil, María Nieves Cruz-Quintana, Francisco Vázquez-Sánchez, Juan Manuel Montoya-Juárez, Rafael |
author_facet | Fernández-Alcántara, Manuel de los Santos-Roig, Macarena Pérez-Marfil, María Nieves Cruz-Quintana, Francisco Vázquez-Sánchez, Juan Manuel Montoya-Juárez, Rafael |
author_sort | Fernández-Alcántara, Manuel |
collection | PubMed |
description | The acquisition of the death concept in children may influence how these children cope with the losses that they will confront throughout their lives. At the present time, there is a lack of psychometric instruments in Spanish-speaking countries in order to evaluate the components of the death concept in children. The aim of this study was to create and validate a scale (EsCoMu-Escala sobre el Concepto de Muerte) in order to provide insight about the concept of death in children. The sample was formed by 358 children from ages 6 to 13 years. The final EsCoMu version has 27 items which serve to evaluate universality, irreversibility, non-functionality and causality. The results of the confirmatory factor analysis show an adequate fit index for the four dimensions model, reliability (α = 83) and validity evidence, specifically based on the children’s age. In conclusion, EsCoMu is an instrument that shows adequate reliability and validity indices in order to assess the concept of death and its four components among children. Due to its simplicity, this instrument can be very useful if applied to the field of neurodevelopmental disorders. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7916254 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | MDPI |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-79162542021-03-01 A New Instrument to Assess Children’s Understanding of Death: Psychometrical Properties of the EsCoMu Scale in a Sample of Spanish Children Fernández-Alcántara, Manuel de los Santos-Roig, Macarena Pérez-Marfil, María Nieves Cruz-Quintana, Francisco Vázquez-Sánchez, Juan Manuel Montoya-Juárez, Rafael Children (Basel) Article The acquisition of the death concept in children may influence how these children cope with the losses that they will confront throughout their lives. At the present time, there is a lack of psychometric instruments in Spanish-speaking countries in order to evaluate the components of the death concept in children. The aim of this study was to create and validate a scale (EsCoMu-Escala sobre el Concepto de Muerte) in order to provide insight about the concept of death in children. The sample was formed by 358 children from ages 6 to 13 years. The final EsCoMu version has 27 items which serve to evaluate universality, irreversibility, non-functionality and causality. The results of the confirmatory factor analysis show an adequate fit index for the four dimensions model, reliability (α = 83) and validity evidence, specifically based on the children’s age. In conclusion, EsCoMu is an instrument that shows adequate reliability and validity indices in order to assess the concept of death and its four components among children. Due to its simplicity, this instrument can be very useful if applied to the field of neurodevelopmental disorders. MDPI 2021-02-09 /pmc/articles/PMC7916254/ /pubmed/33572418 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/children8020125 Text en © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
spellingShingle | Article Fernández-Alcántara, Manuel de los Santos-Roig, Macarena Pérez-Marfil, María Nieves Cruz-Quintana, Francisco Vázquez-Sánchez, Juan Manuel Montoya-Juárez, Rafael A New Instrument to Assess Children’s Understanding of Death: Psychometrical Properties of the EsCoMu Scale in a Sample of Spanish Children |
title | A New Instrument to Assess Children’s Understanding of Death: Psychometrical Properties of the EsCoMu Scale in a Sample of Spanish Children |
title_full | A New Instrument to Assess Children’s Understanding of Death: Psychometrical Properties of the EsCoMu Scale in a Sample of Spanish Children |
title_fullStr | A New Instrument to Assess Children’s Understanding of Death: Psychometrical Properties of the EsCoMu Scale in a Sample of Spanish Children |
title_full_unstemmed | A New Instrument to Assess Children’s Understanding of Death: Psychometrical Properties of the EsCoMu Scale in a Sample of Spanish Children |
title_short | A New Instrument to Assess Children’s Understanding of Death: Psychometrical Properties of the EsCoMu Scale in a Sample of Spanish Children |
title_sort | new instrument to assess children’s understanding of death: psychometrical properties of the escomu scale in a sample of spanish children |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7916254/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33572418 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/children8020125 |
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