Letter to the Editor: A New Scale to Assess Near-Death Experiences

Summary

A research group at the University of Liège evaluated and revised the widely used Near-Death Experience Scale, producing a new 20-item instrument called the Near-Death Experience Content (NDE-C) scale. The revision added items for negative emotions in distressing NDEs, the decision to return to life, and a tunnel experience, expanded Likert responses from a 0-2 to a broader range, and simplified wording. The development involved psychometric analysis of scores from 403 near-death experiencers, expert panel review, validation with 161 experiencers, and tests for discriminant validity against experiences from recreational drug use, meditation, and cognitive trance.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Because the Near-Death Experience Scale (NDE Scale; Greyson, 1983) has been so widely used in NDE research, a recent article by Charlotte Martial and her colleagues ( 2020) is likely of significant interest to researchers in the field of near-death studies.In the article, the authors described a three-phase strategy that the Coma Science Group of the University of Liège in Belgium undertook to evaluate the NDE Scale and develop a revised scale.Several improvements were needed, for example: (a) to include content items that are now known to be characteristic of the NDE phenomenon, such as negative emotions experienced in "distressing" NDEs, the decision to come back to the body and physical life, and a gateway or tunnel; (b) to expand the number of and standardize the meaning of the Likert-type responses to each scale item; and (c) to simplify and clarify the wording of the items to make them easier to understand.The result was the Near-Death Experience Content (NDE-C) scale.In the first phase of instrument development, the research group (Martial et al., 2020) did a psychometric evaluation of the NDE Scale using statistical and factor analysis on scores from 403 near-death experiencers (NDErs).In the second phase, the group developed the NDE-C scale based on earlier analytical studies that group members had conducted on NDE accounts.The NDE-C was reviewed, and the relevance of each scale item was rated by a panel of internationally known external experts in the field of near-death studies.Based on these experts' relevant feedback, the group revised the scale items.The group then used NDE-C scores from 161 NDErs to validate the scale.In the final phase, the group analyzed the NDE-C for discriminant validity when applied to other related subjective experiences that were elicited during recreational drug use, meditation, and cognitive trance.Whereas the NDE Scale consisted of 16 items, the NDE-C scale consists of 20.Although both scales are Likert-type, whereas the NDE Scale response range was 0-2, the NDE-C scale uses an expanded