Death Attitudes across the Life-Span: The Development and Validation of the Death Attitude Profile (DAP)

Abstract

Four orthogonal factors were identified by principal component factor analysis: Fear of Death/Dying, Approach-Oriented Death Acceptance, Escape-Oriented Death Acceptance, and Neutral Death Acceptance. Theta estimates of the internal consistency of the factor scales ranged from fair (.60) to good (.89). An elderly sample ( n = 50) showed less fear of death and more acceptance (all three kinds of acceptance) than the middle age ( n = 50) and the young ( n = 50) samples. As predicted, Fear of Death/Dying was negatively related to happiness, but positively related to hopelessness, whereas Escape-Oriented Death Acceptance was positively related to hopelessness, thus providing some evidence of concurrent validity of the DAP.