Death Anxiety and Psychopathology

Research across various psychology disciplines underscores death anxiety as a significant construct. Numerous tools assess death anxiety, but many have questionable psychometric properties. To address these shortcomings, the Death Anxiety Beliefs and Behaviours Scale (DABBS) was developed, which also assesses death-related maladaptive beliefs and behaviours that could be foundational to fears associated with death. We developed a Persian version of the DABBS, and examined its psychometric properties among Iranian adolescents (n = 598, Mage = 14.80, range = 12-18 years old). Confirmatory factor analyses supported the intended three-factor structure that distinguishes between death-related affect, beliefs, and behaviours. Furthermore, the DABBS demonstrated good internal consistency, as well as expected associations with other measures of death anxiety and psychopathology measures. Notably, one subscale (i.e., Behaviours) unexpectedly did not relate to theoretically-relevant constructs. Our findings indicate that the DABBS has strong psychometric properties among adolescents and can be used with this population.