28-3 A study on the types and inside correlation of afterlife beliefs of undergraduate in Taiwan

The purposes of this study include examining the types of afterlife beliefs that undergraduates hold, understanding the inner-correlation among these types, and pre- senting the explanatory model of the inner-correlation. This study, a continuation on the research of “The construction of native Afterlife Beliefs Scale for Undergraduate (ABSU)” used the ABSU to be the main research instrument. A total of 925 college students were sampled by way of probability proportionate to size for the questionnaire survey. It is still a pilot study in nature. There had not been any empirical studies that analyzed the issues on the relationships and types of internal factors of afterlife beliefs in Taiwan. The conclusions of this study were as follows:

1. In the dimension of affirmance, the undergraduate could be divided into “the be- liever”, “the rejecter” and “the doubter”.

2. There were three belief types among undergraduate about the rules of the after- life, including “the slight believer in causality”, “the rejecter in causality” and “the firm believer in causality”.

3. The undergraduates could be divided into three types in the dimension of cir- cumstance, including“the believer in energy transformation”, “the slight believer in re- incarnation” and “the slight believer in reincarnation”.

4. There were significant two-way correlations among the three dimensions of af- terlife beliefs; the interaction of two dimensions would not be influenced by the third dimension.

5. To integrate the consistency and contradiction of three dimensions, the under- graduates could be divided into three types, including “the type of identity”, “the type of coordination” and “the type of conflict”.

6. Finally, there are reflections in this study that suggest further research.

Keywords
afterlife beliefs、cluster analysis、styles、undergraduate

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