Impact of Mortality Salience on Treatment Decisions

Question about how likely the subject would opt for the more aggressive of two possible therapies on a Likert scale from 0 = very unlikely to 10 = very likely.

12 items, 5-point likert scale, sum score 0 (high level of structure) to 48 (low level of structure) (Ehrenthal et al., 2012)

two subscales: attachment-related avoidance (4 items) and attachment-related anxiety (4 items), 8 items total, 7-point likert scale, sum score from 0 to 48 (higher values correspond to a higher expression of the dimension)

two subscales: search for meaning (5 items) and presence of meaning (5 items), 10 items total, 7-point likert scale, sum score form 5 to 35 per scale with lower levels indicating higher expression of the dimension)

7 items, 5-point likert scale, sum score form 7 to 35 (higher levels indicate more peace of mind)

five subscales: fear of death (7 items), death avoidance (5 items), neutral acceptance (5 items), approach acceptance (10 items), escape acceptance (5 items), 35 items total, 7-point likert scale, an average value is calculated for each subscale by dividing the sum score of the domain by the number of its items

age (years), gender (male, female, other), relationship status (yes, no), children (yes, no), underage children living in the same household (yes, no)

professional experience (years), position (chief physician, senior physician, specialist, assistant physician), place of work (hospital, practice, both, other)

Three subscales: Effort (7 items), reward (3 items), work stress (6 items), 16 items total, 4-point-likert scale (1 to 4), sum scores for each domain with higher levels corresponding to higher expression of the dimension

gender (male, female, other), partnership (yes, no) children (yes, no), underage children living in the same household (yes, no), work situation (employed, on sick leave, housework, pension, unemployed, other [free text]), metastases (yes, no, unknown), date of first diagnosis (month/year, unknown), current disease status (first disease, second disease, relapse, remission, unknown), treatments in the last two months (surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, other systemic therapy / drug treatment for cancer (e.g. immunotherapy), hormones, none, other [free text]), other relevant physical illnesses (yes, which? Immunotherapy), hormones, none, other [free text]), other relevant physical illnesses (yes, which? [free text], no, not known), psychotropic drugs / opiates (yes, which? [free text], no, not known), psychological / psychiatric treatment in the past? (yes, no, not known)

age (years), education (no school-leaving certificate, primary school leaving certificate, secondary school leaving certificate ('Hauptschule' or 'Realschule'), Polytechnical high school 10th grade (before 1965: 8th grade), technical secondary school leaving certificate, high school diploma, I have another school-leaving certificate, namely: [free text])

Four dimensions: accessing, understanding, assessing and using health information, 16 items, four response categories are binarized (1 = "very easy / "fairly easy"; 0 = "very difficult" / "fairly difficult") and added together to form a total score: "adequate" (13-16 points), "problematic" (9-12 points) and "inadequate" (1-8 points).

A total score (0 - 27 points) is calculated from nine items on a four-point Likert scale. The following grading can be used: 0 - 4 points: minimal depressive symptoms, 5 - 9 points: mild depressive symptoms, 10 - 14 points: mild depressive symptoms, 15 - 19 points: moderate depressive symptoms, 20 - 27 points: severe depressive symptoms.

A total score (0 - 21 points) is calculated from seven items, each with a four-point Likert scale. The threshold value for increased anxiety is 10 points.

The questionnaire comprises 12 items with a five-point Likert scale, from which a total score of 12 to 60 points can be calculated. Moderate progressive anxiety is present if more than 50 % of the questions are answered with "often" or "very often", high progressive anxiety with more than 75 % of the questions.

Fear of cancer recurrence, FCR-1r (Smith et al., 2023)

1 item, scale from 0 (no fear of recuurence) to 10 (high fear of recurrence)

The first three items are rated on an 11-point Likert scale from 0 to 10. Item 4 asks for the subjective probability of cancer recurrence (0 to 100), which is then converted to a 0-10 scale. Thus, the total score ranges from 0 to 40, with scores of 12 or higher indicating elevated fear of cancer recurrence levels.