Adolescent non-suicidal self-injury scale - short form: revision and evaluation of its reliability and validity

Non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) is a clinically significant concern among adolescents, and its accurate yet efficient assessment is essential for research, early identification, and intervention. Existing Chinese instruments-most notably the 19-item Adolescent Self-Harm Questionnaire (ASHS)-are relatively lengthy and ill-suited to rapid, large-scale screening. The present study had two aims: (a) to develop a short form of the ASHS, the Adolescent Non-Suicidal Self-Injury Scale-Short Form (ANSSI-SF), by integrating classical test theory (CTT) item analysis with genetic algorithm (GA) cross-validation, and (b) to evaluate its reliability, validity, and screening utility relative to the parent scale.

Using a convenience sample of 1,090 primary and secondary school students, seven items-one for each of seven behavioral categories derived from a functional-typological framework of self-harm-were selected on the basis of CTT item statistics and GA cross-validation. The scale was evaluated through item analysis, internal-consistency and split-half reliability, exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis (EFA/CFA), correlations with theoretically related constructs, known-groups comparisons (gender; smartphone addiction), and consistency and screening-accuracy analyses against the full 19-item ASHS.

It indicated that all items demonstrated strong correlations with the total score, and both internal consistency and split-half reliability reached satisfactory levels.A unidimensional factor structure also exhibited good model fit. Additionally, scale scores were significantly positively correlated with related psychological indicators such as depression, anxiety, and sleep problems, and effectively differentiated differences in self-injurious behavior across gender and smartphone addiction groups.GA cross-validation confirmed that the selected items balanced parsimony with full coverage of all seven behavioral categories.

These findings indicate that the ANSSI-SF is a brief, reliable, and valid instrument that preserves the content breadth of the parent ASHS while substantially reducing administration burden. It is well suited to rapid, large-scale screening and early identification of at-risk adolescents, facilitating timely referral and prevention. Limitations include convenience sampling from a single region and the absence of test-retest reliability; future research should validate the scale in clinical and diverse cultural samples and examine its predictive validity.