Anxiety and death anxiety in Egyptian and Spanish nursing students

Two samples of female nursing undergraduates from Egypt (n = 132) and Spain (n = 126) responded to the Arabic Scale of Death Anxiety, the Spanish Death Anxiety Inventory, the Templer's Death Anxiety Scale, the Kuwait University Anxiety Scale, and the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory-Trait Subscale. Each sample answered the scales in their native language. Alpha reliabilities of the total score scales ranged from 0.65 to 0.91 (Egyptian sample) and between 0.71 and 0.90 (Spanish sample). The Spanish respondents attained significantly lower mean scores than the Egyptian sample in all the 5 scales. All the intercorrelations between these scales were statistically significant, and yielded two factors: Death Anxiety and General Anxiety in both countries. The correlations between these factors were significant, positive, and moderate, that is, 0.57 and 0.50 in the Egyptian and Spanish samples, respectively. The general conclusion is that Death Anxiety and General Anxiety are 2 different, but correlated factors.