قابلیت اطمینان و اعتبار مقیاس وسواس مرگ در میان نمونه های دانشگاهی و بزرگسالان انگلیسی

The reliability and concurrent validity of the 15-item Death Obsession Scale [Abdel-Khalek, A. M. (1998a). The structure and measurement of death obsession. Personality and Individual Differences, 24, 159–165] is examined among 174 English university students (83 men, 91 women) and 105 English adults (42 men, 63 women). Consistent with previous findings when using the Death Obsession Scale, the scale yields a three factor structure (‘death rumination’, ‘death dominance’ and ‘death idea repetition’), demonstrates adequate reliability statistics, and displays concurrent validity with expected significant positive correlations with measures of death anxiety, death depression, obsessional symptoms, anxiety, depression and neuroticism. These findings suggest confidence in the use of the Death Obsession Scale in empirical studies surrounding death distress among English speaking samples.

A preoccupation with death features in all religious traditions and religious individuals are thought to use interpretations of death to provide meaning to their lives (Beit-Hallahmi and Argyle, 1997 and Bloom, 1992). To compliment this view, research suggests that anxiety created through preoccupation with death (death-anxiety (Kastenbaum and Costa, 1977 and Templer, 1970)) or depressive symptoms resulting from thoughts or reactions to death (death depression (Templer, Lavoie, Chalgujian & Thomas-Dobson, 1990)) are related to religiosity, a number of indices of psychological well-being, education about death and attitudes to people working with the dying (Beit-Hallahmi and Argyle, 1997, DavisBerman, 1998, Ireland, 1997, Neimeyer, 1994, Payne et al., 1998, Payne and Range, 1996 and Templer et al., 1990). Abdel-Khalek (1998a) introduces the Death Obsession Scale developed among Egyptian undergraduate students, which is designed to measure a preoccupation, impulses and persistent ideas regarding death. The scale was developed to complement research areas which have investigated death anxiety and death depression, and is thought to provide a third element (of which death anxiety and death depression are the other two) to a general concept of death distress (Abdel-Khalek, 1998a). Therefore the use of the Death Obsession Scale is of interest to empirical studies that investigate death distress. The scale contains 15-items and is scored on a 5 point response format (1 ‘no’, 2 ‘a little’, 3 ‘a fair amount’, 4 ‘much’, and 5 ‘very much’), with possible scores ranging from 15 to 75. The Death Obsession Scale demonstrates a three-factor structure comprising ‘death rumination’, e.g. ‘I fail to dismiss the notion of death from my mind’ (item 3), ‘death dominance’, e.g. ‘the idea that I will die at a young age dominates me’ (item 2) and ‘death idea repetition’, e.g. ‘thinking about death causes me much tension’ (item 13). Each of the subscales demonstrate satisfactory internal reliability (above 0.90) and concurrent validity is demonstrated for the scale with overall scores on the scale significantly positively correlated (all P<0.01) with death anxiety (r=0.62), death depression (r=0.57), general obsession (r=0.46), general anxiety (r=0.33) and general depression (r=0.42). Finally the scale can be linked within Eysenckian personality theory ( Eysenck & Eysenck, 1985) with the scale demonstrating a significant positive correlation with neuroticism (r=0.35, P<0.01) and not with extraversion (r=0.07, P>005). At present, these findings suggest a reliable and valid measure of death obsession. However, at present, examination of the psychometric properties of the scale is confined to Egyptian university students. Abdel-Khalek (1998a) suggests that his study needs to be replicated among English-speaking individuals. Further, it is prudent to examine the psychometric properties of the scale outside university students. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to examine the reliability and validity of the Death Obsession Scale among English students and older adults

Table 1 shows a principal components analysis (Harman, 1967) with oblique direct oblimin rotation (Jennrich & Sampson, 1966) of the 15 items of the Death Obsession Scale with the number of components extracted determined by a Scree Test (Cattell, 1966), for both the student and older adult samples. For both the samples the same solution occurs with the scale breaking down into three factors, ‘death rumination’ (items 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 12), ‘death dominance’ (items 1, 2, 6, and 15) and ‘death idea repetition’ (items 11, 13 and 14). This component structure is the same as reported by Abdel-Khalek, 1998a and Abdel-Khalek, 1998b). Table 1. Principal components analysis with oblique direct oblimin rotation of the Death Obsession Scale’s items Student sample (N=174) Adult sample (N=105) Component 1 Component 2 Component 3 Component 1 Component 2 Component 3 1. Some questions about death come to my mind which I am unable to answer 0.58 0.81 2. The idea that I will die [at a young age] dominates me 0.70 0.85 3. I fail to dismiss the notion of death from my mind 0.54 0.60 4. Thinking about death preoccupies me 0.56 0.78 5. I find it greatly difficult to get rid of thoughts about death 0.64 0.67 6. I recall alarming and painful aspects of death 0.67 0.69 7. I feel I am compelled to think about death 0.81 0.72 8. The idea of death overcomes me 0.61 0.77 9. I have exaggerated concern with the idea of death 0.63 0.82 10. I find myself rushing to think about death 0.77 0.57 11. I fear to be dominated by the idea of death 0.81 0.59 12. I think about death continuously 0.75 0.55 13. Thinking about death causes me much tension 0.66 0.75 14. The recurrence of the idea of death annoys me 0.68 0.80 15. A feeling that I will die suddenly overtakes me 0.74 0.71 Table options Further, Cronbach’s alpha (Cronbach, 1951) reliability statistic revealed alpha reliabilities of 0.90 or above for each of the subscales for both samples: ‘death rumination’ (student, α=0.92; older adult, α=0.90), ‘death dominance’ (student, α=0.91; older adult, α=0.91) and ‘death idea repetition’ (student, α=0.92; older adult, α=0.91). Table 2 shows the Pearson product moment correlation coefficients among all the scales. First, the Death Obsession Scale is significantly positively correlated with death anxiety, death depression, obsessionality, anxiety, depression. Further, the inter-correlations between the Death Obsession Scale and the other death attitude scales (death anxiety and death depression (minimum, r=0.60)) are higher than the correlations between the Death Obsession Scale and the measures of obsessional symptoms, anxiety and depression (maximum, r=0.54). This suggests discriminant validity for the Death Obsession Scale, as it is more closely related to other measures of death attitude than general aspects of obsessionality, anxiety and depression. Further, the Death Obsessional Scale shares a significant positive correlation with neuroticism and not extraversion. These findings are consistent with the findings of Abdel-Khalek, 1998a and Abdel-Khalek, 1998b and together support the concurrent validity of the Death Obsession Scale. Table 2. Pearson product moment correlation coefficients among all the measuresa Scale 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1. Death obsession 1.00 0.68∗∗∗ 0.65∗∗∗ 0.54∗∗∗ 0.51∗∗∗ 0.39∗∗∗ 0.29∗∗∗ 0.02 2. Death anxiety 0.64∗∗∗ 1.00 0.63∗∗∗ 0.43∗∗∗ 0.40∗∗∗ 0.36∗∗∗ 0.27∗∗∗ −0.02 3. Death depression 0.62∗∗∗ 0.68∗∗∗ 1.00 0.41∗∗∗ 0.34∗∗∗ 0.33∗∗∗ 0.26∗∗∗ 0.03 4. General obsession 0.51∗∗∗ 0.43∗∗∗ 0.41∗∗∗ 1.00 0.65∗∗∗ 0.64∗∗∗ 0.41∗∗∗ 0.11 5. General anxiety 0.45∗∗∗ 0.33∗∗∗ 0.28∗∗ 0.59∗∗∗ 1.00 0.62∗∗∗ 0.54∗∗∗ 0.05 6. General depression 0.35∗∗∗ 0.34∗∗∗ 0.25∗∗ 0.63∗∗∗ 0.66∗∗∗ 1.00 0.40∗∗∗ −0.04 7. Neuroticism 0.33∗∗∗ 0.28∗∗ 0.23∗ 0.35∗∗∗ 0.61∗∗∗ 0.28∗∗ 1.00 0.01 8. Extraversion 0.02 0.01 0.03 −0.05 0.07 0.01 −0.01 1.00 a Above the diagonal: student sample (N=174); below the diagonal: adult sample (N=105). ∗P<0.05, ∗∗P<0.01, ∗∗∗P<0.001 (two-tailed).