IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v46y1998i1p73-81.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Situational factors and attitudes toward voluntary euthanasia

Author

Listed:
  • Macdonald, William L.

Abstract

This study examines how attitudes toward voluntary euthanasia vary across categories of four situational factors: (1) type of assistance; (2) type of assistant; (3) type of illness; (4) age of the patient. The data, based on a random sample of 514 adult residents of Ohio, indicate that more active assistance is favored over less active assistance, and that voluntary euthanasia for cancer patients receives more support than does voluntary euthanasia for victims of Alzheimer's disease. The findings also suggest that, for persons who do not strongly adhere to the belief that life belongs to God, physician-assistants are preferred over nonphysician-assistants, and that voluntary euthanasia for children receives less support than does voluntary euthanasia for adults. For those who strongly adhere to the belief that life belongs to God, however, these two situational factors have less of an influence. At the microlevel, the findings appear to reflect a concern about safeguarding patients' autonomy in the decision-making process, and a concern about authoritative control of the procedure of voluntary euthanasia. At the macrolevel, the findings suggest that the influence of cultural ideology on a social movement's direction is not independent, but is instead moderated by the internal dynamics and struggles of movement organizations. This is indicated by the finding that movement leaders' attitudes toward active assistance on the part of the physician are more consistent with the attitudes of physicians than with the attitudes of the public.

Suggested Citation

  • Macdonald, William L., 1998. "Situational factors and attitudes toward voluntary euthanasia," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 46(1), pages 73-81, January.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:46:y:1998:i:1:p:73-81
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(97)00146-9
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Erwin Stolz & Nathalie Burkert & Franziska Großschädl & Éva Rásky & Willibald J Stronegger & Wolfgang Freidl, 2015. "Determinants of Public Attitudes towards Euthanasia in Adults and Physician-Assisted Death in Neonates in Austria: A National Survey," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(4), pages 1-15, April.
    2. Davidson, Laura A. & Pettis, Clare T. & Joiner, Amber J. & Cook, Daniel M. & Klugman, Craig M., 2010. "Religion and conscientious objection: A survey of pharmacists' willingness to dispense medications," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 71(1), pages 161-165, July.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:46:y:1998:i:1:p:73-81. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.