Miss Sanaz Nabipour, Dr Moradi Moradi, Dr Robabeh Nouri, Dr Hadi Parhoon, Dr Maryam Moghadasin,
Volume 17, Issue 1 (Volume17, Issue 1 2023)
Abstract
Death anxiety is commonly experienced by individuals with advanced cancer who have a limited life expectancy. The Death and Dying Distress Scale (DADDS) is a validated measure that was created to capture this experience; but no Persian version is available to date. We conducted a cross-sectional study to explore the psychometric properties of a Pearsion version DADDS (DADDS) in patients with advanced cancer.200 patients with advanced cancer were recruited from the Imam Khomeini, Shohada Tajrish and Baqiyatallah hospitals. Measures administered included: DADDS-C, Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9), and General Anxiety Disorder-7(GAD-7). McDonald's Omega, Cronbach's alpha, Confirmatory Factor Analysis were used to test DADDS reliability and validity.The Persian version of DADDS has good reliability (internal consistency between 0.67 and 0.91 and test-retest reliability between 0.73 and 0.89) and appropriate convergent validity through correlation with PHQ-9 and GAD-7 in the range was between (0.47 to 0.51). Also, according to construct validity, SEM showed that the two-factor model is the best fitting model for DADDS in Persian language.The DADDS is a valid measure of death anxiety in Iranian patients with advanced cancer. It may provide useful information in the assessment and treatment of distress in patients near the end of life.
