中華心理衛生協會

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the suitability of the foreign Afterlife Expectation Scale when being used for the sample of native undergraduate population. Furthermore, the afterlife belief of an undergraduate population in Taiwan was understood.Method: The method to carry out this study was a questionnaire survey, which included questions to which the participants were expected to respond anonymously. The participants for this research were selected from the population of two universities in midland Taiwan. The researcher sampled randomly six departments from universities former, and chose fifty juniors from every department which was sampled. A total of 300 students were selected and 252 participants had finished the afterlife belief questionnaire. The instrument used in this study was Afterlife Expectation Scale. The scale consisted of that development from 45 items and was divided into five dimensions. The original authors had established satisfactory reliability. All forty-five items were translated from English into Chinese. The reliability and validity of translated Chinese scale was satisfactory except the difference of factor structure between translated scale and original scale. The original scale include 'joy/reward afterlife', 'judgment afterlife', 'earth-based afterlife', 'surreal afterlife', and 'extinction afterlife' five dimensions and the dimensions of translated scale included 'judgment and suffering', 'extinction', 'reincarnation', 'joined with God', and 'roam around the world of mortal'. The analysis used the SPSS statistical software package. First, descriptive statistics were computed. Next, reliability as a measure of internal consistency was calculated. Analysis of variance was used to detect significant difference among variety religions. Finally, cluster analysis was done to determine the afterlife belief types of undergraduate population in Taiwan.Results: The results of this study included the discussion on the suitability and factor structure of Afterlife Belief Scale that translated from the foreign Afterlife Expectation Scale, the afterlife belief of an undergraduate population in Taiwan and types of afterlife belief. The first, the Cronbach's alpha of subscales of translated Afterlife Belief Scale were, 8875, . 8343, . 8500, . 7987 and. 6893. The data showed the good reliability of Afterlife Belief Scale. Although the factor structure of translated scale is different from the original scale, the former is more reasonable than the latter. The translated Afterlife Expectation Scale is suitable to survey the afterlife belief of the native undergraduate population. The second, the score of 'reincarnation' (M=4.59) is higher than four (the middle value of seven points Likert scale), and the scores of 'judgment and suffering', 'extinction', 'joined with God', and 'roam around the world of mortal' (M=3.99, 3.83, 3.68, 3.87) are lower than four. The results of the repeated measures ANOVA indicated a significant difference 'reincarnation' and other subscales. The scores of 'judgment and suffering' and 'roam around the world of mortal' were higher significantly than the score of 'joined with God'. A college student may keep many viewpoints about life after death at one time. It's would not appropriate to divide afterlife beliefs immediately into 'to believe' and 'not to believe'. The third, the results of the ANOVA indicated a significant difference among faiths of religion. The Buddhist and Taoist have higher score in the subscales of 'reincarnation' and 'judgment and suffering', The Buddhist and Christian have more belief in ‘joined with God'. And the score of Taoist in the subscales 'roam around the world of mortal' is higher than the Christian and infidel. The last, The undergraduates could be grouped into 'hesitation', 'judgment', 'distrust', 'hypocrite' and 'paradise' five types according to the scores of subscale of Afterlife Belief Scale.Conclusions: The conclusions of this study were as follows: (1) The Afterlife Expectation Scale is suitable to survey the afterlife belief of the undergraduates in Taiwan through modification, but the factor structure is different from the original scale. (2) Generally speaking, the undergraduates in Taiwan about afterlife belief have a tendency towards hesitation. Both points of rationalization and non-rationalization are existing simultaneously. (3) The religion difference in afterlife belief among undergraduates is significant. (4) The undergraduates could be grouped into five types according to the afterlife belief. The research bring up some meta-reflections upon methods and further research finally. They include expanding national sample, developing the native afterlife belief scale, establishing the norms table of native afterlife belief, exploring deeply the relationship between afterlife belief and religion, and examining the criterion-related validity of afterlife belief and some variables.