Death Obsession in Palestinians

The authors explored death obsession level and correlates among a sample (N = 601) of Palestinians living in the city of Beit Jala, the village of Al-Khader, and the Aida refugee camp in the Bethlehem area. They live in war conditions; the houses of half of them have been demolished. The Death Obsession Scale (DOS) was administered. Its alpha reliability was .92, denoting high internal consistency. Among women, it yielded 1 factor, (General Death Obsession), whereas among men it yielded 3 factors: Death Rumination, Death Dominance, and Death Idea Repetition. Palestinian men and women attained significantly lower DOS mean scores than participants from 4 Arab countries: Egypt, Kuwait, Syria, and Lebanon in 7 out of 8 comparisons. However, Palestinian women had significantly higher DOS mean score than their Spanish, American and British counterparts, whereas Palestinian men had significantly higher mean DOS score than Spanish peers. The low DOS scores of Palestinians, in proportion to other Arab samples, may reflect their adaptation to strife and violence.

Many thanks to Professor Lillian Range, the Associate Editor of this periodical, and two anonymous reviewers of the manuscript for their invaluable comments and constructive suggestions. We also thank Dr. John Maltby for sending the descriptive statistics of the Death Obsession Scale among the British sample.

Notes

Note: See Table 3 for the items of the DOS.

^a All the t ratios are significant (p = .02 and above).

Note. ^a Medium effect size.

^b Small effect size.

*p < .05, 2-tailed;

**p < .0001, 2-tailed.