Evaluation of the reliability and validity of two clinician-judgment suicide risk assessment instruments

This study evaluates the psychometric properties and factor structure of two clinician-judgment suicide risk assessment instruments--the Suicide Assessment Checklist developed by Yufit and the other developed by Rogers.

As an archival study, 85 client records were obtained through a university psychology clinic.

Internal consistency was high for only one subscale of the Yufit checklist after deleting items for factor analyses, whereas internal consistency was high for the overall Rogers checklist after deleting items. Interrater reliability was excellent for both instruments. Both checklists correlated with self-reported suicidality on the Personality Assessment Inventory. Preliminary analyses indicated that data from the Yufit checklist are unsuitable for factor analysis, whereas factor analysis of the Rogers checklist identified one depressive factor.

These findings provided evidence supporting the reliability and validity of the Rogers checklist. The findings also provided a good starting point for future research of the Yufit checklist.