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Preliminary Field‐Testing of a Risk Estimator For Suicide
Author(s) -
Motto Jerome A.
Publication year - 1985
Publication title -
suicide and life‐threatening behavior
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.544
H-Index - 90
eISSN - 1943-278X
pISSN - 0363-0234
DOI - 10.1111/j.1943-278x.1985.tb00940.x
Subject(s) - suicide prevention , poison control , human factors and ergonomics , injury prevention , occupational safety and health , psychology , scale (ratio) , psychometrics , medicine , clinical psychology , medical emergency , psychiatry , physics , pathology , quantum mechanics
A 15‐item suicide risk estimator, empirically derived from a prospective study of 2, 753 suicidal persons, was given a field trial in five clinical settings. Two hundred ninety subjects were included. Volunteer crisis workers needed an average of 4.5 minutes to complete the instrument, and rated its ease of administration 2.5 on a 5‐point scale. When compared with clinical ratings, the instrument estimated suicide risk slightly higher than did the interviewers. Scale items that differed from the raters' intuition tended to be omitted more than others. The trial provided valuable information needed to prepare for a large scale evaluation.