University students in Canada (n = 255) and Northern Ireland (n = 315), graduate nursing students (n = 124), funeral service students (n = 79), and members of the Unitarian Fellowship (n = 83) completed Templer's Death Anxiety Scale (DAS). The responses of each group were subjected to principal components factor analysis using varimax rotational procedures and the factor scores derived from this analysis were then contrasted using multiple discriminant function analysis. Results indicated that there was more commonality than uniqueness in the factor patterns for these groups. Four common death anxiety patterns were classified as follows: (a) cognitive-affective concerns; (b) concern about physical alterations; (c) concern about the passage of time; and (d) concern about stressors and pain. These factors are consistent with and extend the views expressed in previous research (i.e., Pandy, 1974-75; Pandy & Templer, 1972.
University students (n = 165), graduate nursing students (n = 102), and funeral service students (n = 68) completed Templer's Death Anxiety Scale (DAS) and a Death Personification Exercise (DPE). Responses to the DAS and DPE were subjected to principal components factor analysis using varimax rotational procedures and the factor scores derived for each scale were intercorrelated. Prior to this comparison, DPE responses were contrasted using multiple discriminant function analysis. Results showed there was more communality than uniqueness in the factor structures. Interrelations between the nine common DPE and four DAS factors were generally low but did suggest that: (a) perceptions of death as a gay deceiver were related to a cognitive-affective component of death anxiety; while images of death as a gentle comforter or macabre figure were related to an awareness of the passage of time; and (b) reactions to death and descriptions of the activities of death were associated with concern about physical alterations.
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