Scale for suicide ideation: Psychometric properties of a self-report version

TLDR

A self‑report version of the Scale for Suicide Ideation was administered to 50 inpatients with mixed DSM‑III disorders and 55 outpatient affective disorder patients, available in paper‑and‑pencil and computer formats. Self‑reported SSI scores correlated >0.90 with clinician ratings, had Cronbach alphas in the 0.90s, and patients reported higher ideation severity than clinicians.

Abstract

A self-report version of the Scale for Suicide Ideation (SSI) was administered to 50 inpatients diagnosed with mixed DSM-III psychiatric disorders and 55 outpatients with affective disorders. The self-report SSI was written for both paper-and-pencil and computer administration. The correlations between the self-reported and clinically rated versions for both inpatients and outpatients were > 0.90, which suggests strong concurrent validity. The Cronbach coefficient alphas for the paper-and-pencil and computer versions were also in the 0.90s and indicated internal consistency. Furthermore, the mean SSI scores of the compute version for both the inpatients and outpatients were higher than the mean SSI scores of the clinical ratings; the patients described more severe suicide ideation than clinicians reported.