Assessing personal meanings of death: Empirical refinements in the threat index

Abstract

Over the past decade, researchers have shown increasing concern with the psychometric soundness of instruments devised to measure death attitudes. This paper reviews data on the development, validation, revision, and extension of the Threat Index, a widely used measure of the threat implied by one's personal death. In addition, the paper discusses two new research directions deriving from the Threat Index literature; these research directions enhance the utility of the Threat Index in clinical and scholarly investigations.