Abstract
Using data from the Sixth Wave Longitudinal Survey of Well-being of Rural Older Adults in Anhui Province China conducted in 2015, this paper applies Death Anxiety Questionnaire (DAQ) to validate its applicability to measure death anxiety of Chinese rural older adults, so as to describe their level and structure of death anxiety, and to analyze influencing factors. The results show that DAQ is generally suitable to measure death anxiety, which includes unique structural dimensions of fear of suffering, fear of loss of the role, and fear of loneliness. Death anxiety of Chinese rural older adults is relatively low, with fear of suffering is the main source of death anxiety and fear of loneliness is the lowest. Further analysis demonstrates that the death anxiety is affected by the social demographic and economic characteristics, health status, family factors and religious factors.