Editing and psychometrics of the death attitude tool and its association with organ donation after brain death: based on structural equation model

In the modern age, with its increasing reflexivity, death has changed to technical issue, its quality is left to the medical profession, so a new definition of death is introduced as brain death and the possibility of organ transplantation. Therefore, this article aimed to investigate death attitudes and its relationship with organ donation.

This descriptive-analytical study examined 475 people over the age of 20 years in Kashan in September 2017 using a population-based random sampling method. The research instrument was a researcher-made questionnaire based on Giddens' theory of late modernity. Data analysis is based on correlation and structural equation design using SPSS and AMOS software.

Among the five dimensions of belief to death, natural belief, with the acceptance of death as the end of life and an inevitable reality as a result of rethinking, awareness of death, medical advances and confidence in experts of the field among the five dimensions of belief to death, had the highest average (3.77 out of 5) and were the most important explanatory variables for both religious (β=0.35, P<0.001) and scientific (β=0.33, P<0.001) dimensions to the organ donation. Model fit indices, Absolute (RMSEA=0.03) Comparative (CFI=0.92) Parsimonious (PRATIO=0.58), showed that the collected data supported the conceptual model well.

The designed tools had good validity and reliability and structural equation showed that organ donation entails the acceptance of death and some kind of trust since in the case of denying the death with either theme of fear or avoidance, the individual cannot accept the organ donation.