A 51-item Death Anxiety Scale-Extended was constructed. This scale consists of the 15 Death Anxiety Scale items plus 36 new items which were generated on a rational basis that both survived content validity ratings and correlated at the .001 level with three out of four groups (one Kuwaiti, one Sudanese, and two American) participants. The Death Anxiety Scale-Extended correlated .

A 12-item Animal-Human Continuity Scale with a Likert-type 7-option format was constructed to measure the extent to which the respondent views humans and animals in a dichotomous fashion vs. on a continuum. After the generation of items on a rational basis, item selection was based on ratings of content validity followed by item-total score correlation based on a sample of 88 graduate students, faculty and university staff participants. The scale contained such items as “Humans can think but animals cannot”, “People evolved from lower animals”, and “People have a spiritual nature but animals do not”. A Cronbach's alpha of .69 was obtained. The scale yielded three factors– “rational capacity”, “superiority vs. equality”, and “evolutionary continuum”. More traditionally religious participants tended to respond in the dichotomous direction. In another validation project a significant difference in the expected direction was found for participants from a Unitarian Universalist church (in the continuous direction) and a conservative Methodist church (dichotomous direction). Implications for the use of this instrument in the measurement of individual differences are discussed.

IQs were correlated with the z score of suicide rate minus z score of homicide rate using nine regions of the world--established market economies, formerly socialized Europe, India, China, other Asian nations, Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America/Caribbean, Middle East Crescent, and the USA. Correlations were .85 and .83 with crude rates and age-adjusted rates, respectively. The homicide findings are consistent with previous research in individual countries showing that less intelligent persons commit homicide more often. However, the present findings of a positive correlation between IQ and suicide rates are the opposite of what has been found in the more definitive studies within countries. Explanations for the apparent paradox and for the findings more generally were offered.

Participation of relatives to provide clinical information on psychiatric patients is frequently under-utilized resulting in valuable data being bypassed. In an attempt to formalise the gathering of data from relatives we used the Geriatric Evaluation by Relatives Rating Instrument (GERRI), a 49-statement questionnaire in which the relative rates the patient's behaviour in terms of frequency of occurrence, The information obtained from relatives was then compared with that obtained from other forms of patient-assessment—the London Psychogeriatric Rating Scale completed by nursing staff, the Minimental State Screening Test and the Visual Analogue Scale for Depression completed by the patient, and the Activities of Daily Living Instrument completed by the occupational therapist. These instruments were chosen as being valid and reliable procedures with which to compare the GERRI. Subjects were 100 patients aged 65 yr. and over who were admitted consecutively to a psychogeriatric unit in a large psychiatric hospital. Significant correlations between relatives' assessment of cognitive and social function and those completed by the patients and other staff were noted. The relatives' assessment of the patients' mood, however, did not correlate with the patients' self-assessment of mood, suggesting that depression in the elderly may be “masked.”

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