The meaning of death for children and adolescents: A phenomenographic study of drawings

The purpose of this study was twofold: to investigate the qualitative differences in children's concepts of death, as reflected in their drawings and to study the gender differences in children's death concepts. Subjects were 431 children. of four age groups (9, 12, 15, and 18 years) and both sexes. The children were asked to draw their impression of the word death and to give a verbal commentary on what they had drawn. The drawings were analyzed according to a phenomenographic method and assigned to one of 3 superordinate and 10 subordinate qualitative categories. The categories were found to be both age and gender related. Biochemical death concepts dominated the younger age groups, and metaphysical death concepts were found predominately in the older age groups. Boy had more violent death concepts then did girls and personified death more often. Girls depicted death in me emotional terms than boys did.