Some Reliability and Validity Considerations on Australian Data from the Death Anxiety Scale

Abstract

Data derived from an administration of the Death Anxiety Scale [1] to Australian samples is analyzed with a view to providing comparative cross-cultural observations as well as some indication of realiability and validity in the Australian context. Measures of central tendency and dispersion and sex differences were found to be comparable with other surveys of similar groups to those of the present study. The Scale does not appear to suffer from acquisence set, is internally reliable and groups that would be expected to score lower than others, do so – providing some indication of construct validity. The Scale is not “factorially-pure,” however, and at least three “sub-scales” can be identified. These sub-scales are analyzed and discussed.