Editorial Comment

Alpha Psychiatry 2023;24(1):13-14

DOI: 10.5152/alphapsychiatry.2023.20122022

Commentary: Psychometric Properties of the Turkish Version of the Dark Future Scale

Wai Tong Chien¹

Huanyu Mou¹

¹ The Nethersole School of Nursing, The Chinese University of Hong Kong Faculty of Medicine, Sha Tin, Hong Kong

Corresponding author: Wai Tong Chien ✉ wtchien@cuhk.edu.hk

Cite this article as: Chien WT, Mou H. Commentary: Psychometric properties of the Turkish version of the dark future scale. Alpha Psychiatry. 2023;24(1):13-14.

It is a valuable opportunity to write up this commentary for the article by Yakin et al.¹ entitled “Psychometric properties of the Turkish version of the Dark Future Scale”. In Yakin et al.’s article, the authors translated the Dark Future Scale (DFS) into Turkish language (termed DFS-TR) for assessing people’s future anxiety (FA), and then validated the DFS-TR among 478 young adults aged 18-25 years at four private universities. The validation results indicated that the DFS-TR demonstrated an acceptable construct validity with factor loadings between 0.57 and 0.86, satisfactory internal consistency with Cronbach’s alpha (0.86), and good convergent validities indicated by its significant associations with trait anxiety, smoking status and life satisfaction of the 478 participants. The authors recommended that the DFS-TR was a reliable and valid self-reporting instrument to measure FA among young adults in Turkey.

FA is an important concept of personal life perceived by an individual in response to their current life circumstances and future expectations. As mentioned by Yakin et al., an individual’s current behavior could likely be influenced by the past life events that most research have primarily focused on, but it might also be impacted by how the future to be perceived.¹ According to Zaleski, FA is defined as a subjective state of apprehension, uncertainty, worry, and fear induced by the unfavorable personal changes in the coming future.² Distinguished from other similar concepts (e.g., fear, worry and/or future time perspective), FA is primarily featured by 1) its ‘negative’ perspective towards own personal future; 2) indicating one aspect of mental status in response to an aversive situation in a distant future; and 3) a cognitive (e.g., thoughts, associations and fantasies) rather than an emotional character.²,³

The 5-item Dark Future Scale (DFS) was recently modified and refined by Zaleski and colleagues³ based on Zaleski’s own 29-item Future Anxiety Scale developed in 1996.² The 5-item DFS has been validated in general population (i.e., adults aged 18-70 years) with a high level of internal reliability (i.e., Cronbach’s alpha of 0.90), together with a satisfactory one-month test-retest reliability of 0.62 that has not yet been tested on the FAS-TR in the published article. However, when compared to the 29-item scale, this new brief scale with 5-item is more easy and efficient to use, especially when it will likely be used in a battery of study instruments. The acceptable psychometric properties of DFS-TR demonstrated in Yakin et al.’s study¹ further supported its usefulness and appropriateness to assess young adults’ negative perceptions and uncertainties to their own distant future.

What can we do to further generalize this recently validated instrument? The DFS is a relatively new instrument for assessing FA, and it has recently been translated and validated in other two languages (i.e., Italian⁴ and Persian⁵). In order to facilitate a wider use of this brief and well-validated instrument, more validation work can be done in more languages and cultures, and larger diverse communities/populations. In addition, the usefulness of the DFS and its translated versions can be tested in different vulnerable health and illness groups, such as people with chronic diseases and survivors after catastrophes (e.g., war and COVID-19 pandemic). For instance, Torfayeh et al. reported the 5-item DFS was reliable and valid among mothers of children with intellectual disability,⁵ which was supported by the acceptable construct validity with factor loadings of 0.58 to 0.78, and good convergent validity as indicated by the significant associations with the anxiety measured by the Beck Anxiety Scale (coefficient = 0.65, p < 0.01). Moreover, satisfactory reliabilities were also suggested, with the internal consistency, split-half reliability and 45-day test-retest reliability of 0.71, 0.64 and 0.70, respectively. While Yakin et al.’s validation study¹ in this published article remained focusing on a small sample of general population, more research on specific community/illness groups can extend the applicability of FA measurement in diverse health/illness conditions.

How can we apply for this scale in the future studies? To date, existing studies have been focused on investigating and addressing ‘positive’ side/aspects of the future perspective such as hope and optimism. The ‘negative’ aspects of the future perspective are overlooked and have seldom been explored by mental health professionals and researchers.⁶ This validated DFS-TR by Yakin et al. in this published article has provided a useful tool for the professionals/researchers to conduct further research to measure the negative perspective towards future and its related concepts and predicting factors. In addition, this scale can be used for identifying people with high levels of FA or ‘negative’ future perceptions.

References

  1. Yakın, İ, & Şen, ET. (2023). Psychometric properties of the Turkish Version of the Dark Future Scale. Alpha Psychiat, https://doi.org/10.5152/alphapsychiatry.2022.22972.

  2. Zaleski, Z. (1996). Future anxiety: concept, measurement, and preliminary research. Pers Individ Dif, 21(2), 165-174, https://doi.org/10.1016/0191-8869(96)00070-0.

  3. Zaleski, Z, Sobol-Kwapinska, M, Przepiorka, A, & Meisner, M. (2019). Development and validation of the Dark Future scale. Time Soc, 28(1), 107-123, https://doi.org/10.1177/0961463X16678257.

  4. Jannini, TB, Rossi, R, Socci, V, & Di Lorenzo, G. (2022). Validation of the Dark Future Scale (DFS) for future anxiety on an Italian sample. J Psychopathol, 28(2), 86-93, https://doi.org/10.36148/2284-0249-457.

  5. Torfayeh, M, Ghamarani, A, & Bagherzadeh, S. (2020). Investigation of the validity and reliability of the Dark Future Scale in mothers of children with intellectual disability. J Fundam Ment Health, 22(5), 333-340, https://doi.org/10.22038/JFMH.2020.17507.

  6. Bujnowska, AM, Rodríguez, C, García, T, Areces, D, & Marsh, NV. (2019). Parenting and future anxiety: the impact of having a child with developmental disabilities. Int J Environ Res Public Health, 16(4), https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16040668.

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