DEATH ANXIETY SCALE

TRANSLATION AND VALIDATION IN PATIENTS WITH CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASE

Abstract

Patients with cardiovascular disease (CVD) have the symptoms of anxiety in
common that may result in adverse outcomes. Objectives: Due to the significant association
of anxiety and CVD, scheduled screening of all cardiac patients has been recommended by
the medical authorities like the American Heart Association. But in Pakistan it is not a common
practice to use such tools, reason being unavailability of such screening tools in national
language therefore specifically death anxiety is unrecognized and no measures are taken
for it and patients remain undertreated with death anxiety that may eventually influence on
the treatment and prognosis of the patients. Data source& Settings: Colleges and hospitals
of the Rawalpindi and Islamabad. Period: 6 months. Methods: The study was designed to
translate and validate the Death Anxiety Scale in Urdu language to be used with Pakistani
population. The sample consisted of 210 participants (70 Youngsters (normal group) 70 Elderly
and 70 patients with cardiovascular diseases (clinical group) from colleges and hospitals of the
Rawalpindi and Islamabad. To determine the psychometric properties, reliability and validity;
cronbach alpha, split-half reliability, correlation, factor analysis were computed. Results: Death
Anxiety Scale-Urdu (DAS-U)( ) has adequate reliability and validity. Factor analysis
showed multifaceted structure for the DAS-U, bearing in mind the apposite psychometric
characteristics; it can be used in researches about death anxiety. Conclusions: The use of
the scale is reasonable for the measurement of death anxiety in CVD patients and it can be
employed in order to have successful treatment and improve the prognosis of the patients.