Good to hear from you. Here are some quick responses to your queries.
1. There is a growing lit on death attitudes in relation to HIV; if you
send me your address I can send you a recent paper from our research group
that discusses some of this literature.
2. The TI (maybe better the DTI, but I didn't name it) is one of a handful
of good instruments that are reviewed in my recent book on Death Anxiety,
as well as presented with scoring keys. You might find it useful to
consider more than one such measure, some of which measure death
acceptance, different dimensions of death fear, etc.
3. We have experimented with different scoring systems for the TI, each of
which has its own advantages--the split score is more familiar and has a
larger literature, the distance score (absolute or Euclidean) is
potentially more sensitive. You might use both and compare them in your
study.
4. No absolute norms exist for any death attitude measure (or for the vast
majority of other measures in psychology), but comparisons with the means
and SD's of other published studies permits some comparability.
Again, I'll send you info if you remind me of your address. Good luck.
Robert A. Neimeyer, Ph.D.
Department of Psychology
University of Memphis
Memphis, TN 38152
(901) 678-4680
FAX (901) 678-2579
neimeyerra@MSUVX1.MEMPHIS.EDU