The freedom to die with dignity - Religiosity and attitudes towards euthanasia among Israeli social sciences students

The paper deals with the attitudes of Israeli social sciences students towards euthanasia in view of the marked increase in approval rates of voluntary termination of life practices for the terminally ill. Basically, it set out to assess the relationship between the students' self-identified religiosity and their attitudes towards euthanasia. It analyzes the findings of an exploratory study carried out on a convenience sample of 127 social sciences students in an Israeli public college. The administered questionnaire was meant to trace three components of the students' attitudes to euthanasia: Affective, cognitive and conative. It embraced two parts, one dealing with feelings and opinions, the other - with ideological-behavioural attitudes. All in all, the study revealed that religiosity plays a major role in shaping attitudes towards assisted end-of-life, both in as much as the affective, cognitive and conative components of the students' attitudes are concerned. However, the study also revealed that lukewarm support for euthanasia transcends religiosity in the college. It turned out that even the secular students' support for physician-assisted death was very reserved. One conclusion of the paper is that the institutional character or climate is apparently a major contributor to that uncharacteristic conservative attitude.