Templer Death Anxiety Scale (DAS)

Abstract

The Templer Death Anxiety Scale (DAS) is a widely respected and utilized self-report instrument in psychological research and clinical practice, designed specifically to quantify an individual’s level of anxiety and fear related to their own mortality. Developed by Donald I. Templer in 1970, the DAS addresses the need for a concise, standardized measure of this core existential concern, which is often clinically referred to as thanatophobia. This construct specifically focuses on the anxiety caused by thoughts of one’s own death, distinguishing it from related but separate concepts like necrophobia (fear of dead bodies or dying others).

Empirical research using the DAS has consistently shown that death anxiety is a pervasive psychological variable influenced by a complex interplay of demographic variables (such as age and gender) and clinical factors (including physical health status and overall psychological well-being). High scores on the DAS are predictive of significant, persistent distress that can impair daily functioning. The scale is crucial for researchers studying interventions, such as cognitive behavioral therapy, that aim to mitigate or reduce mortality-related fear across various populations.

Keywords

Death Anxiety, Thanatophobia, Templer Death Anxiety Scale, DAS, Psychological Assessment, Existential Anxiety, Psychometrics, Self-Report Scale, Mortality Fear.

Authors

Donald I. Templer.

Purpose

The central purpose of the Templer Death Anxiety Scale (DAS) is to furnish researchers and clinicians with a standardized, objective, and quantifiable method for assessing the intensity of an individual’s conscious and potentially unconscious fears pertaining to death and the process of dying. Prior to the DAS, standardized psychometric tools for measuring this specific fear were limited, hindering reliable comparisons and generalizations across different academic studies.

The scale was specifically constructed to facilitate rigorous empirical research aimed at understanding the psychological mechanisms, clinical manifestations, and demographic implications of death anxiety. It is widely employed across clinical, health, and developmental psychology to investigate how various factors—such as developmental stage (e.g., lower ego integrity in older adults), mental illness, or the efficacy of therapeutic interventions—impact an individual’s fear of mortality. The DAS is instrumental in identifying individuals or populations that may be experiencing debilitating levels of this anxiety, which often presents as persistent distress or avoidance behaviors concerning mortality-related discourse.

Construct

The DAS measures the construct known as death anxiety, which encapsulates the specific psychological and emotional distress that arises from the contemplation of one’s personal non-existence, finitude, or the physical process of dying. This construct is deeply embedded within theoretical psychology, notably explored by seminal thinkers such as Sigmund Freud, Erik Erikson, and Ernest Becker, who posited that the fear of death is a fundamental aspect of the human condition and cognitive awareness.

While theoretical frameworks, such as those proposed by psychotherapist Robert Lang, might decompose death anxiety into distinct categories (e.g., predatory fears, predator fears, and existential fears), the DAS operates primarily as a global measure, assessing the overall intensity of this negative emotional state. Clinically, when this anxiety is persistent, intrusive, and severe enough to interfere with daily life, it may be deemed morbid or abnormal by a psychiatrist, necessitating therapeutic intervention.

Validity

The initial evidence supporting the psychometric soundness of the DAS was established by Templer in his foundational 1970 publication detailing its construction and validation. Subsequent cross-cultural and population-specific investigations, including work by Tavakoli and Ahmadzadeh (2011), have consistently confirmed the scale’s applicability and validity across diverse settings.

The DAS provides robust evidence for its construct validity, demonstrated by expected correlations with other established measures of general anxiety and related indices of psychological distress. Critically, the scale also exhibits strong discriminant validity, meaning it successfully differentiates mortality-specific anxiety from general, non-specific anxiety or other defined phobias. This psychometric clarity ensures that the DAS is genuinely assessing the specific fear of death, making it a highly accepted and reliable tool for measuring this single, unidimensional construct within psychological research.

Reliability

The Templer Death Anxiety Scale has consistently achieved acceptable to high levels of psychometric reliability across numerous normative and clinical studies since its inception. The initial validation work provided strong foundational evidence for its stability and internal consistency.

Reliability assessments, including those conducted on adapted or translated versions of the instrument, frequently report adequate Cronbach’s alpha coefficients. These high values confirm the scale’s strong internal consistency, indicating that the 15 individual items reliably cohere and measure the same underlying dimension of mortality-related distress. Furthermore, the DAS has demonstrated acceptable test-retest reliability, suggesting that scores remain stable over reasonable periods when the underlying psychological state of the respondent has not significantly changed.

Factor Analysis

The Templer Death Anxiety Scale was fundamentally designed and validated as a unidimensional instrument. This means its structure comprises 15 items intended to load onto one single, overarching factor: general death anxiety. This unidimensional conceptualization dictates the standard scoring procedure, which involves summing all anxiety-indicating responses to yield one total score, typically ranging from 0 to 15.

Although certain advanced factor analytic methodologies have occasionally suggested the potential existence of minor sub-factors—such as specific fears related to pain, the unknown aspects of death, or bodily decomposition—the scale’s primary utility and most robust application in research settings relies almost exclusively on the strength and comprehensive nature of its total score as an indicator of overall mortality-related fear and apprehension.

Instrument

Test Type: Self-Report Questionnaire / Psychological Screening Tool

Format: 15 Dichotomous Items (True/False scoring)

Language Available: English (Original), widely translated (e.g., Persian, Spanish, etc.)

Population Group: General population, clinical samples, and various demographic groups.

Age Group: Adolescents and Adults

Population Details: The scale is applicable across diverse demographic subgroups, frequently used in comparison studies between different age groups (young versus old) and genders (men versus women). It is particularly pertinent for research involving populations facing increased physical or psychological challenges, as these groups often report elevated levels of death anxiety.

Test Methodology: Respondents are presented with 15 statements concerning their feelings about death and dying, to which they respond using a simple true or false format. The total score is calculated by summing the number of responses that indicate death anxiety, producing a final score between 0 and 15. A higher total score signifies a greater degree of death anxiety.

Keywords

Mortality Salience, Existential Concerns, Thanatology, Psychological Measurement, Cognitive Processing, Clinical Assessment, Self-Report, Unidimensional Scale.

Authors

Author ORCID Identifier: Not provided in source.

Affiliation Email addresses: Not provided in source (Original author, D. I. Templer).

Correspondence Address: Not provided in source.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

Test Year: 1970

Permissions/Fee: The Templer Death Anxiety Scale is extensively used in non-commercial academic research and is often considered available for such purposes. However, any formal commercial use or large-scale clinical application requires seeking explicit permissions from the original author, Donald I. Templer, or the original publisher, The Journal of General Psychology.

Reference’s

• Templer, D. I. (1970). The construction and validation of a death anxiety scale. The Journal of General Psychology, 82, 165-177.
• Tavakoli, M. A. & Ahmadzadeh, B. (2011). Investigation of Validity and Reliability of Templer Death Anxiety Scale. Thought & Behavior in Clinical Psychology, 6(21). The original PDF can be downloaded here: http://www.sid.ir/en/VEWSSID/J_pdf/1000520112101.pdf
• Hoelterhoff, M. E. (2010). RESILIENCE AGAINST DEATH ANXIETY IN RELATIONSHIP TO POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER AND PSYCHIATRIC CO-MORBIDITY. Thesis submitted to the University of Plymouth. The instrument can be found on pages 186-189. The original PDF can be downloaded here: http://pearl.plymouth.ac.uk/pearl_jspui/bitstream/10026.1/306/4/Hoelterhoff%20M%20E_2010.pdf

Items of the Templer Death Anxiety Scale (DAS)

IMPORTANT: The following scale items must be preserved in their original language and must not be changed in any way.

1. I am very much afraid to die.
2. The thought of death seldom enters my mind.
3. It does not make me nervous when people talk about death.
4. I dream to think about ha‎ving to have an operation.
5. I am not at all afraid to die.
6. I am not particularly afraid of getting cancer.
7. The thought of death never bothers me.
8. I am often distressed by the way time flies so very rapidly.
9. I fear dying a painful death.
10. The subject of life after death troubles me greatly.
11. I am really scared of ha‎ving a heart attack.
12. I often think about how short life really is.
13. I shudder when I hear people talk about a World War III.
14. The sigh of a dead body is horrifying to me.
15. I feel that the future holds nothing for me to fear.