Ignoring the fact I think you misunderstood my stance and the point
of my post, here's where we really disagree.... and I think it really
has relatively little to do with Kubler-Ross in the end...
There are 1000s of personal reports supporting the Kubler-Ross stage
model. Some of these reports come from professionals, while other
reports come from paraprofessionals. Some reports come from those
offering counsel to people in grief, while other reports come from
those experiencing grief and seeking assistance. Admittedly these
reports are anecdotal and subject to bias and confounds, but they do exist.
You feel that these reports have absolutely no value, presumably
because they are anecdotal. Therefore you do not consider them in
making your decision about the meaning of this study. As far as you
are concerned these other reports which support the idea simply do
not exist. This in turn makes it easy to discount the need for future
research on the topic. One study found it didn't exist, and that's
good enough to say it doesn't really exist. No need to look at
anything else. Had this been a new theory/model being presented, I
might be content leaving it here.... but that isn't the case here...
For me, these other anecdotal reports do exist and carry some weight
(individually not much, but together they start to add up a little).
And, admittedly I give more weight to an empirical, controlled
research study, but I don't completely discount the anecdotal
evidence either. Everything gives us some piece of the picture, we
just have to figure out where it belongs and what it means in
relation to everything else. I set the anecdotal evidence off to the
side to see how it fits and works with the empirical research
findings as they are gathered. You seem to want to throw this same
evidence away and pretend it doesn't exist, or at the very least you
assume that the anecdotal evidence is meaningless in understanding
the larger picture. To me this is going to leave you with an
incomplete picture at the end. It might take me a bit longer to try
and see how everything "fits", but at least the picture will be complete.
Of course, even if this 2007 study is really the first and only piece
of evidence in this case, there is still the chance that it could be
wrong. And in that case, supporters of the model need to be doing
more research on it to see. I'm not intending to argue for one side
or the other. I'm simply stating that at this point there appears to
be some degree of support on both sides and therefore we should
exercise caution before becoming too enthusiastic (in either
direction) over the results of any 1 study.
And, if we start discounting the cautions authors give us about their
own studies, are we really doing any better at reading and
understanding the research than the popular media that is often
accused of making more of a study than what the results actually tell us?
- Marc
=============================================
G. Marc Turner, PhD, MEd, Network+, MCP
Senior Lecturer & Technology Coordinator
Department of Psychology
Texas State University-San Marcos
San Marcos, TX 78666
phone: (512)245-2526
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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