The contribution of a MOOC to community discussions around death and dying

BMC Palliative Care

Table 6 Attitudes Toward Death by Socio-Demographic Characteristics ^a

	Health Occupation ^b	University Qualified ^b	Gender ^b	Age ^c	SEIFA Disadvantage ^c
	Z (n)	Z (n)	Z (n)	r (n)	r (n)
Pre-MOOC Death Attitudes
Death is a normal part of life	0.44 (1154)	4.09*** (1154)	−1.05 (1140)	.05 (1148)	.02 (1078)
I am comfortable talking about death/dying	−1.38 (1154)	1.23 (1154)	−0.97 (1140)	.14*** (1148)	.01 (1078)
Most people do NOT feel comfortable talking about death/dying	1.75 (1154)	2.73** (1154)	−0.28 (1140)	.03 (1148)	.03 (1078)
Death/dying is presented as a normal part of life in the mainstream media	−0.17 (1154)	−7.55*** (1154)	0.73 (1140)	−.05 (1148)	−.14*** (1078)
Social media provides different perspectives to mainstream media on death/dying	0.64 (928)	−0.73 (928)	1.13 (915)	−.03 (922)	−.04 (877)
Post-MOOC Death Attitudes
Death is a normal part of life	0.45 (208)	−0.22 (208)	−0.38 (206)	.09 (205)	−.06 (200)
I am comfortable talking about death/dying	−0.75 (208)	−1.35 (208)	−1.75 (206)	.18** (205)	−.19**(200)
Most people do NOT feel comfortable talking about death/dying	−0.78 (208)	0.61 (208)	−0.05 (206)	.21** (205)	.14 (200)
Death/dying is presented as a normal part of life in the mainstream media	1.39 (208)	−4.38*** (208)	0.82 (206)	−.02 (205)	−.13 (200)
Social media provides different perspectives to mainstream media on death/dying	−0.53 (208)	−3.25*** (208)	0.72 (206)	.06 (205)	−.09 (200)

^aPre-MOOC death attitudes data was provided by n = 1154, with the exception of the social media question, which was only presented to n = 928. N = 208 participants had socio-demographic data at enrolment and death attitudes data at the conclusion of the MOOC. A small number of participants had missing data on gender and age. SEIFA Disadvantage Index is only available for n = 1078 participants who provided an Australian postcode for their location at enrolment
^bThe non-parametric Mann-Whitney U test was used to analyse group differences due to the ordinal nature of the death attitude questions, and their skewed distributions. Nonetheless, the conclusions from the Independent samples t-tests and non-parametric Mann-Whitney U tests were the same
^cSpearman’s Rank-Order Correlation was used to analyse associations due to the ordinal nature of the death attitude questions. Conclusions using Pearson’s correlations were very similar
Note. ** p < .01; *** p < .001

ISSN: 1472-684X