Death Anxiety Scale Cross-cultural Adaptation And Its Applications

[Objectives] Firstly, this study is to provide the public group use and further study an efficient instrument by the cross-cultural adaptation of the Templer's Death Anxiety Scale (T-DAS) from the USA and the reliability and validity evaluation; Secondly, we tend to analyze the respondents' death anxiety incidence, influencing factors and performance characteristics.[Methods] Step 1, cross-cultural adaptation of the Templer's Death Anxiety Scale (T-DAS). After the five processes of the translation, synthesis, back translation, expert committee review, pretesting, we revised the Death Anxiety Scale into a Chinese version. Step 2, the formal investigation. A cross-section study was conducted among 450 medical college students and 50 hospice workers with multiple diagnoses to validate the Chinese version of the Templer's Death Anxiety Scale (T-DAS), after 7 to 10 days,60 of them were retested. Reliability and validity of the Chinese version of Templer's Death Anxiety Scale (T-DAS) were evaluated according to the data. And the Death Anxiety status was analyzed as well.[Results]1 The Chinese version of the Templer's Death Anxiety Scale (T-DAS) was easy to understand. Most respondents finished the whole scale in 5 to 10 minutes, and the effective recovery rate of the scale was 97.4%.2 The internal consistency reliability evaluated by Cronbach'a was 0.71 for the whole 15 items was. The retest reliability was 0.831 for the whole 15 items.3 The correlation between the T-DAS and the Single item Test for the death anxiety was 0.516. Structural equation models and factor analysis displayed good construction of the T-DAS.4 The mean score of the T-DAS was 6.71±3.01. The Grade of the medical college students, received the death education or hospice care professional education or training or not, and the experience the death of beloved family or friends over the past five years, these three factors have influence on the death anxiety.[Conclusion] Based on the analysis, the Chinese version of the T-DAS has good validity and reliability. It is easy to perform, and should be a good instrument for the evaluation of the death anxiety. And we should pay more attention and do more research to the death anxiety in our country.