Convergent Validity, Situational Stability and Meaningfulness of the Threat Index

Abstract

A pair of related experiments examined the psychometric properties on the Threat Index (TI), a theoretically based scale for the assessment of threat of death. An extremity scoring revealed that both structured interview and paper-and-pencil versions of the TI were more meaningful to respondents than was a similar instrument utilizing semantic differential dimensions. The TI displayed generally low convergence with Lester's Fear of Death Scale, Tempter's Death Anxiety Scale, and the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory. Although the TI demonstrated some capacity to discriminate groups of respondents on the basis of personal characteristics (e.g., religious affiliation), scores on the instrument did not increase as a function of an anxiety-producing experimental manipulation. The high reliability of the TI suggested its functioning as an index of stable conceptual orientation toward death.