ABSTRACT
Death is not a pleasant subject to discuss anytime. In India's religious
traditions it is considered "apshakun" (Inauspicious) to even mention it. However
Indian culture also emphasizes the dignity and spiritual significance of death.
Although almost everyone tries to prolong their life in all possible ways, few people
wish to shorten their life and end it in a dignified way by the means of Euthanasia.
Euthanasia is the deliberate ending of one's life, either directly (active euthanasia) or
by withholding life-prolonging procedures and resources (passive euthanasia). It is
either at that person's stated or inferred request (i.e., voluntary euthanasia) or in the
lack of such approval (i.e., assisted suicide or non-voluntary euthanasia). The term
Euthanasia is derived from Greek words "Eu" and "Thanatos" which means "good
death" or "easy death."
The purpose of the present study was to understand how people perceive
Euthanasia. And what are the factors that affect their attitude towards euthanasia?
Death Anxiety, Neuroticism, Conscientiousness, Religiosity, and Personal
Adjustment were considered for understanding the relationship with Attitude towards
Euthanasia. After doing extensive literature review hypotheses were formed to predict
the relationship between criterion and predictive variables. Standardized tools
measuring the research variables were administered on a sample of 492 participants.
The initial data screening was done based on the number of participants who
completed the entire set of psychometric tools, were eligible after using inclusion and
exclusion criteria and removal of outliers. After doing this initial screening, 345
participants' responses were considered for final analysis.
Descriptive statistics was done to understand the data. This included mean,
standard deviation, skewness, kurtosis. The t-test was done to know whether there
exists any difference on criterion variable that is Attitude towards Euthanasia in terms
of gender. The t value of the scores was found to be -1.198. This value was
insignificant to consider the difference to be a genuine difference. Therefore the entire
data sample was analyzed in a single correlation matrix.
Correlational analysis showed that Death Anxiety (r=.135, p<.05) and
Religiosity (r=207, p<.01) had positive significant relation with Attitude towards