2017/02/08 by Sungeun Yang, Soyeon Park
Psychology · #Counseling, Therapy, and Family Dynamics #Grief, Bereavement, and Mental Health #Identity, Memory, and Therapy
paper · doi:10.1177/0030222817693138
crossref issued 2017/02/08 · crossref published 2017/02/08 · crossref published-online 2017/02/08 · openalex publication_date 2017/02/08 · crossref created 2017/02/08 · crossref published-print 2017/11/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · crossref deposited 2026/05/01 · crossref indexed 2026/07/29 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
By employing the phenomenographic approach, the present study explored children's cognitive understanding of and emotional responses to death and bereavement. Participants included 52 Korean, 16 Chinese, and 16 Chinese American children ages 5-6. Thematic analysis of children's drawings and open-ended interviews revealed that most children associated death with negative emotions such as fear, anxiety, and sadness. The majority of children used realistic expressions to narrate death. The core themes from their drawings included causes for death, attempts to stop the dying, and situations after death. This study contributes to the literature by targeting young children who have been relatively excluded in death studies and provides evidence in the usefulness of drawings as a developmentally appropriate data collection tool. The findings also enrich our knowledge about children's understanding of death and bereavement, rooted in the inductive analysis of empirical data with children from culturally diverse backgrounds.