Near-death Studies - Measurement Tools - Indices, Scales and Questionnaires

Indices, Scales and Questionnaires

Ring developed the Weighted Core Experience Index which, according to some commentators, has improved consistency in the field. This instrument has been used to measure the depth of a near-death experience.

Greyson developed The Near-Death Experience Scale. This 16-item Scale was found to have high internal consistency, split-half reliability, and test-retest reliability and was correlated with Ring's Weighted Core Experience Index. Questions formulated by the scale address such dimensions as: cognition (feelings of accelerated thought, or "life-review"), affect (feelings of peace and joy), paranormal experience (feelings of being outside of the body, or a perception of future events) and transcendence (experience of encountering deceased relatives, or experiencing an unearthly realm). A score of 7 or higher out of a possible 32 was used as the standard criterion for a near-death experience. The scale is, according to the author, clinically useful in differentiating NDEs from organic brain syndromes and nonspecific stress responses. The NDE-scale was later found to fit the Rasch rating scale model

In the late eighties Thornburg developed the Near-Death Phenomena Knowledge and Attitudes Questionnaire. The questionnaire consists of (1) 23 true/false/undecided response items assessing knowledge, (2) 23 Likert scale items assessing general attitudes toward near-death phenomena and (3) 20 Likert scale items assessing attitude toward caring for a client who has had an NDE. Knowledge and attitude portions of the instrument were tested for internal consistency. Content validity was established by using a panel of experts selected from nursing, sociology, and psychology. The instrument has been used to measure attitudes toward, and knowledge of, near-death experiences in a college population, among clergy, among registered psychologists, and among hospice nurses.

Greyson has also used mainstream psychological measurements in his research, for example The Dissociative Experiences Scale; a measure of dissociative symptoms, and The Threat Index; a measure of the threat implied by one's personal death.