Evaluation of the Death Anxiety Beliefs and Behaviors Scale in Iranian Adolescents

Numerous tools assess death anxiety, but many have questionable psychometric properties. The Death Anxiety Beliefs and Behaviors Scale (DABBS) addresses these shortcomings, assessing death-related maladaptive affect, beliefs, and behaviors that could be foundational to fears associated with death. We translated the DABBS into Persian and examined its psychometric properties among Iranian adolescents (n = 598, Mage = 14.80, range = 12-18 years old). Confirmatory factor analyses supported the intended three-factor structure that comprises death-related affect, beliefs, and behaviors. Furthermore, the DABBS demonstrated good internal consistency, as well as expected associations with other measures of death anxiety and psychopathology measures, except that the Behaviors subscale unexpectedly did not relate to theoretically relevant constructs. Our findings indicate that the DABBS affect and belief subscales have strong psychometric properties among Iranian adolescents. However, further research is needed to elucidate whether the overall DABBS score demonstrates improved validity when used with other populations.