The Near-Death Experience Scale. Construction, reliability, and validity.
Authors: Bruce Greyson
DOI / Source: https://doi.org/10.1097/00005053-198306000-00007
Date: June 1983
Reading level: Intermediate
Why This Matters for Freedivers
Freediving is one of the few sports where healthy people can flirt with extreme hypoxia if they train or behave unsafely. This scale matters because it gives a standardized way to describe and compare “near-death-type” experiences (time distortion, intense peace, out-of-body feelings, vivid imagery), which sometimes get reported after severe hypoxia, blackout incidents, or medical emergencies. It helps separate storytelling from structured features—and reminds us that chasing altered states is not a safe training goal.
Synopsis
This classic paper introduced what’s now widely known as the Greyson Near-Death Experience (NDE) Scale—a practical tool designed to measure NDEs in a consistent, quantitative way.
Greyson started with a large pool of reported NDE features gathered from previous literature and early questionnaires, then refined them into a 16-item scale that covers four clusters: - Cognitive (e.g., changes in time perception, unusually fast or clear thinking, life review), - Affective (e.g., peace, joy, sense of harmony or unity), - Paranormal (e.g., heightened senses, extrasensory-type impressions), - Transcendental (e.g., encountering an “other realm,” a mystical presence, or a boundary and return).
Each question is scored 0, 1, or 2, giving a total score range of 0–32. The paper reports that the scale shows strong internal consistency and reliability (including test–retest), and that the total score (and sub-scores) behave in a way that supports the scale’s validity. It also compares the new scale with an earlier measure of NDE “depth,” showing good agreement while improving usability.
A practical takeaway is that the scale isn’t meant to prove what an NDE “is,” but to make NDE reports measurable—so researchers and clinicians can compare cases, study patterns, and distinguish strong NDE-type accounts from vague or questionable ones. The paper also suggests a useful threshold: a score around 7 or higher can be used as a working cut-off for identifying NDEs in research settings.
Abstract
Near-death experiences (NDEs) have been described consistently across time, but research has been limited by the lack of standardized quantitative measures. This paper reports the development of a 16-item Near-Death Experience Scale created from a larger set of commonly reported NDE features, selected and grouped into meaningful components (cognitive, affective, paranormal, and transcendental). The scale demonstrates good reliability and validity, correlates well with prior measures of NDE “depth,” and helps differentiate clear NDE reports from uncertain or questionable claims. The author proposes that this brief, easy-to-use instrument can support both clinical description and systematic research on NDEs.