Good Grief! After-Death Communication, Grief, and Gratitude

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

See comments attached. 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Comment [A1]: Show the relevance of this to after-death communication. (This is in relation to the section of Grief and Gratitude, lines 78-113)

Response: (See below)

Comment [A2]: Show the relevance of this to after-death communication. (This is in relation to the section of Grief and Compassion, lines 114-162)

Response: The opening sections of the article are a literature review of what is currently known about the relationship between grief, the emotions of gratitude and compassion, and after-death communication. As such, the relevance of grief, gratitude, and compassion to ADC has yet to be explored. This, in fact, is the very rationale for the study—that the relationships among these constructs have yet to be explored. Therefore, it is premature to state their relevance to after-death communication at the opening of the article. The hypotheses for the study state that the authors anticipate that there will be a positive correlation among them. The relationship itself is described in the findings of the correlational study and the qualitative interviews. Most articles reporting on mixed methods studies do not expect these relational findings to be discussed prior to describing the research design and data collection.

Comment [A3]: Dr. Alan Botkin’s work with Induced After-Death Communication should be mentioned here.

Response: A great suggestion and a description of Dr. Botkins work has been added to the article. See highlighted lines 192 – 196.

Comment [A4]: This is what Botkin pioneered as a therapeutic intervention. Also, when you refer to “deliberately facilitated”, I wonder if that needs to be more clearly explained…facilitated by whom? A therapist trained in IADC, like Botkin, or a medium/channeler, or some kind?

Response: Another good suggestion, and this clarification was added. See highlighted lines 222 – 226.

Comment [A5]: How does this relate to ADC? (This is in reference to a description of the Transpersonal Gratitude Scale.)

Comment [A5]: How does this relate to ADC? (This is in reference to a description of the Compassion.)

Response: The question here is, how do these scales relate to ADC? These sections describe the data collection instruments that will be used to explore the relationship between the variables and ADC. The relationship is unknown at this point. These descriptions are intended to establish that the psychometric assessments have been scientifically validated and show acceptable metrics; hence, these sections are entirely devoted to describing their scientific validity as independent measures and not their relationship to the after-death communication. Those relationships are completely outlined in the findings of the correlational study – See lines 323 – 408.

Comment [A7]: References: Add Botkin’s work with IADC.

Response: This was added. See highlighted reference.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

It's an excellent study, and I recommend it for publication, with some minor revisions. I've attached your document here with some comments (converted to Word so I could add the comments).  My concerns are: 

1. No mention of Dr. Alan Botkin and his work with IADC (Induced After-Death Communication ) as a therapeutic intervention. He is the leading pioneer in this field.

2. The relevance of compassion and gratitude in the context of this study.  The connection between gratitude and grief in relation to post-traumatic growth is well-known, as is the importance of compassion for clinicians working with the bereaved. But the relevance of these things to this study was not made clear (if it was, then perhaps I missed the connection). 

3. Clarification of what is meant by "facilitated" after-death communication when the concept is first introduced in the paper. 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Comment 1: The Abstract would benefit from some clarification. It is not clear why the research question was chosen or its theoretical basis. Why would after-death communication lead to feelings of gratitude and compassion? Why would there be any linkage?

Response: Typically, article abstracts describe the research question, research design, and the findings. They generally do not get into the theoretical foundations of a study. That is in the body of the article. With a 200-word limit for the abstract, it is impossible to include any meaningful discussion of the theoretical underpinnings. We feel that this is adequately addressed in the body of the article. We added one sentence at the top to clarify this point in response to the comment. See the highlighted sentence. This now puts the abstract at 195 words.

Comment 2:  The paper gives no information about what prior information participants were given about the study and what attracted them to take part. Were there incentives? The recruitment method should be explained, especially as the survey shows such high levels of people experiencing after-death communication.

Response: These clarifications were added to the article. See highlighted lines 304-310.

Comment 3: While there is a reference to unspecified spiritual practices, the paper gives no information about the religious background of the participants, which might influence their receptiveness to after-death communication and whether this is positively or negatively viewed. This omission seems particularly odd given that the paper has been submitted to a journal called Religions, where one would expect religious views of after-death communication to form part of the context for the study.

Response: The authors of the study deliberately chose to address participants’ religious backgrounds in the context of spirituality. We anticipated that their religious backgrounds and orientations would be wide-ranging, with many identifying as spiritual but not religious. In order to make room for all orientations, we allowed participants to share their religious/spiritual orientation individually. This study was created for submission to a Special Issue of Religions, described as “exploring how grief care integrates religion and spiritual identities. Grief is an experience intricately woven into people’s lives, and religion/spirituality often offer an added dimension of significance to the meaning-making when someone is grieving.” We feel that our approach was in keeping with this intention. The findings of Study 2 go into detail about participants’ spiritual and religious understanding of grief, with many making shifts in their religious understanding. See lines 534-570 for a detailed description of shifts in religious and spiritual belief structures.

Comment 4:

The qualitative participants include only those able to articulate their experiences clearly. It is also noticeable that there is a large drop in the percentage of male participants. The researchers could say more here about the issues of drawing conclusions about after-death communication from this highly selected and predominantly female group, who appear from the quotes to be highly educated.

Response: Since Study 2 focused specifically on the lived experience of ADC, the recruitment necessarily only included those with that experience. This was part of the study design since the interviews were intended to explain the meaning of the correlational data. We agree that the issue of gender bias in the participant sample is in need of further clarification. This was done in the text. See highlighted lines 418-423 for more details.

Comment 5: “After-death communication” is not part of standard vocabulary. The abstract should define this term rather than leaving it to line 215.

Response: Again, there is insufficient space to define terminology in the abstract. The word limit of 200 words prohibits that. We feel that the term “after-death communication” has enough face validity to convey the overall subject matter of the study. There is a specific section on after-death communication that highlights various definitions and describes what is currently known through the research (See lines 163 – 198). In our thinking, it made sense to describe and define after-death communication only after discussing the various aspects and stages of grief. That way, the context for after-death communication was clearer.