The Role of Advance Care Planning on Community Dwelling Adults' Coping Abilities and Death Attitudes: A Sequential Mixed-Methods Study.

Participants were recruited by convenience and snowball sampling, and the sample was mostly Chinese and highly educated, so results may not apply to all community adults. The study compared adults who had already completed advance care planning with those who had not, so it cannot show that advance care planning caused any difference. Recruitment may have attracted people already interested in advance care planning, and the study did not include adults with life-limiting illness. Self-reported questionnaires and interviews may be affected by recall and by participants wanting to answer in a socially acceptable way. The qualitative phase included only adults who had completed advance care planning, so it did not explore the views of adults who had not. The groups differed in ethnicity, although the analysis adjusted for ethnicity.

The authors declared no conflicts of interest. The study was funded by a National University of Singapore Research Fellow Start-Up Grant.

Do not conclude that completing advance care planning causes better coping with death. The study compared adults who had already completed planning with adults who had not, so it cannot show that planning produced the difference.