Measuring Death-related Anxiety in Advanced Cancer
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The alleviation of distress associated with death and dying is a central goal of palliative care, despite the lack of routine measurement of this outcome. In this study, we introduce the Death and Dying Distress Scale (DADDS), a new, brief measure we have developed to assess death-related anxiety in advanced cancer and other palliative populations. We describe its preliminary psychometrics based on a sample of 33 patients with advanced or metastatic cancer. The DADDS broadly captures distress about the loss of time and opportunity, the process of death and dying, and its impact on others. The initial version of the scale has a one-factor structure and good internal reliability. Dying and death-related distress was positively associated with depression and negatively associated with spiritual, emotional, physical, and functional well-being, providing early evidence of construct validity. This distress was relatively common, with 45% of the sample scoring in the upper reaches of the scale, suggesting that the DADDS may be a relevant outcome for palliative intervention. We conclude by presenting a revised 15-item version of the scale for further study in advanced cancer and other palliative populations.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".