USE OF THE THREAT INDEX WITH FAMILY MEMBERS WAITING DURING SURGERY

We describe the use of the 40-item Threat Index (TI) with family membe rs (N = 206) of surgical patients who also completed Templer's (1970) Death Anxiety Scale, the Death-of-Self and Dying-of-Self subscales of the Collett-Lester (1969) Fear of Death Scale, and the Death Acceptanc e subscale of Reker and Peacock's (1992) Life Attitude Profile-Revised . Word sets from the 40-item TI that are part of the 25- and 7-item ve rsions of the TI produced strong alphas and correlations to their pare nt instrument. Regression analyses indicated that self/ideal-self scor es and previous experience as a hospital patient were significantly as sociated with TI scores. We conclude that if the time available for co mpletion and scoring of the TI is limited, the shorter versions can be used, although their alpha strengths are slightly lower than that of the full TI and the respondent's age influences the scores.