As many as 10 percent of us have had what we think is a near-death experience, which, doing the math, that’s a lot – roughly 36 million in the U.S. alone.
A group of University of Virginia School of Medicine researchers are working to enhance the scientific rigor of research tools to assess what the heck goes on there.
UVA’s Marieta Pehlivanova, Ph.D., and Bruce Greyson, MD – working with external colleagues Rense Lange, Ph.D., and James Houran, Ph.D. – analyzed two scoring scales that are used to evaluate near-death experiences.
The first scale, the 16-item Near-Death Experience Scale, was developed at UVA way back in 1983 by Greyson and used extensively in hundreds of studies. The second, the Near-Death Experience Content Scale, was created in 2020 in hopes of addressing limitations of the NDE Scale – adding several items for additional perceptions, adapting the wording of items and changing the response scale.
The new analysis suggests the two scales are comparable, but the older NDE Scale remains the gold standard.
“We found that both scales measure the same underlying near-death experience construct, but the new items added to the NDE-C did not consistently fit in the hierarchy of perceptions as validated by advanced psychometric analysis,” Pehlivanova said.
“Improving our tools to assess near-death experiences accurately and efficiently is important to advance the research, especially in clinical settings,” Pehlivanova said.
So, the oldie is still the goodie, in terms of analyzing the experiences of those who have had their lives flash before their eyes.
What the research tells us
Greyson developed the NDE Scale to serve as a framework for scientific analysis of experiences that, on their face, seem to defy scientific explanation.
Near-death experiencers, for example, often report that their world views are radically changed by the things they saw or experienced while they were clinically dead or in a medical crisis.
These brushes with death give many experiencers renewed purpose in life, a desire to serve others and an appreciation for being part of a greater whole.
Others, though, can struggle to make sense of the experience, especially if their NDE conflicts with their religious or existential beliefs, personal values or scientific views.
Greyson’s scale has been the benchmark for scientific research into these experiences for decades. But he has been eager to find ways to improve the research tools available, prompting him and his colleagues to do the direct comparison with the newer NDE-C Scale.
Testing the model
To conduct an impartial evaluation, Pehlivanova, Greyson and their colleagues used “Rasch modeling” – a math-based tool widely employed to assess the effectiveness of measurements used in health, psychology and education research.
The model was applied to questionnaires from both scales completed by more than 700 people with near-death experiences.
The model identified problems in the response categories of both scales. Near-death experiencers often find the experience to be “ineffable” – almost impossible to describe – and the data shows that it may be difficult for them differentiate meaningfully between the intensity of different perceptions as measured by the scales.
The newly added items in the NDE-C scale relate to additional perceptions in these experiences (such as the feeling of being dead), but they do not consistently fit in the psychometric model assessed in the study.
“Although both scales can be further refined and additional work needs to be done in assessing near-death experiences, we recommend continued use of the original NDE scale,” the researchers reported in a new scientific paper.
“This instrument has already been used in hundreds of studies since the 1980s, providing a consistent basis for comparison with new research. Rasch modeling indicates that near-death experience perceptions as measured by this scale form a continuous spectrum, which has now been replicated in two independent samples, strengthening the case for its adoption as a well-established assessment.”
Room for improvement
The analysis suggests specific areas for improvement in both scales. Greyson’s, for example, could benefit from improving the response categories, the scientists report. The results, the researchers say, will ultimately enhance how we explore and understand near-death experiences.
“These findings have implications not only for how we assess near-death experiences in research and clinical settings, but also for our theoretical understanding of these experiences,” Pehlivanova said. “An accurate measurement model of near-death experiences can help inform theories of their underlying causes.”
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Chris Graham
