Death Anxiety and Social Desirability among Nurses

Abstract

Registered nurses (n = 210) from Canadian public general hospitals were administered Templer's Death Anxiety Scale and the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale. Responses on the Death Anxiety Scale were subjected to a principal-axes factor analysis, from which were extracted five factors. In the order of their relative prominence for the sample of nurses, the identified factors were: 1) “death anxiety denial,” 2) “general death anxiety,” 3) “fearful anticipation of death,” 4) “physical death fear,” and 5) “fear of catastrophic death.” Correlation analyses indicated a statistically significant inverse relationship between the variable of social desirability and “death anxiety denial”; however, no other statistically significant relationships were found to exist between the social desirability variable and the remaining four Death Anxiety Scale factors. The inverse relationship between a particular aspect of death anxiety and the response set of social desirability for nurses in this study was discussed in light of corroborative findings by other investigators, as well as in terms of its implications for further studies of death anxiety among health professionals.