Unfinished Business in Bereavement and Its Relationship to Prolonged Grief: A Validation Study
Type of research: Quantitative empirical
Description:
Losing a loved one can be seen as one of the most difficult life experiences. While most people adapt to loss over time, around 10% of bereaved people develop prolonged grief disorder (PGD; Lundorff et al., 2017). PGD occurs when, at least 12 months after the loss, grief intensity remains so severe that it still impairs daily functioning. Key symptoms are yearning for and preoccupation with thoughts of the deceased (American Psychiatric Association, 2022).
A related concept that is theoretically argued to be a risk factor for developing and maintaining PGD is “unfinished business”, which is defined as unresolved issues that a bereaved person may have in relation to their deceased loved one. However, only recently, a reliable and valid measure has been developed to assess this construct, and empirical research examining it is still limited (Holland et al., 2020).
In this project, you will validate the Dutch translation of the brief Unfinished Business in Bereavement Scale (UBBS; Holland et al., 2020). In addition, you will examine the relationship between unfinished business and other related variables of your interest, such as PGD intensity, grief rumination, guilt, regret, or overall well-being. The study will have a cross-sectional design.
To gain the full quantitative research experience, you will also set up the study in Qualtrics and recruit participants together with three other students. You can decide whether you want to focus more on psychometric analyses (i.e., solely on the validation but more in-depth), or broaden the research by relating unfinished business to other variables (e.g., moderation or mediation analysis).
Examples of research questions could be:
- To what extent is the Dutch version of the brief UBBS a reliable and valid measure?
- To what extent are PGD and unfinished business associated?
- How do different subtypes of unfinished business associate with PGD intensity?
- To what extent do background variables (e.g., time since loss or cause of death) moderate the relationship between unfinished business and PGD?
Who are we looking for?
As part of the data collection phase, you will set up a questionnaire in Qualtrics and write an invitation letter for participants in Dutch. Therefore, students should be adequately proficient in the Dutch language (at least B2 level).
What do we offer?
We will provide a previously translated Dutch version of the brief UBBS, a partial Qualtrics template, and assist with participant recruitment.