Grief in widowhood and divorce.

This article describes the development of scales to assess grief and anger in widowhood and divorce. Widows have significantly higher grief scores than do divorcees, but the two groups do not differ in the degree of anger they report. Grief and anger scores are higher for widows and divorcees with social and psychological vulnerabilities and demographic characteristics that have been hypothesized as making them at greater risk for difficulties in adjustment. The data are from age, race, and census tract of residence-matched samples of widows and divorcees interviewed approximately 3 months after the death of or filing for divorce from their spouses.