Measuring fear of death: a reliability study

An increase in interest in death education among helping professionals and a concern for a lack of reliability and validity data on some instruments measuring attitudes about death is reviewed. The Collett-Lester Fear of Death Scale and the Lester Attitude Toward Death Scale were administered twice to 20 graduate level male and female counselor trainees over a six-week interval. Test-retest reliability coefficients on all scales and subscales were significant but low to moderate only.