The child suicide potential scale: inter-rater reliability and validity in Israeli in-patient adolescents

The objective of this study was to evaluate the psychometric properties of the Hebrew version of the Child Suicide Potential Scale for use with psychiatrically hospitalized adolescents. The criterion validity, the parallel validity, the internal consistency, the inter-rater reliability and the test-retest reliability were assessed. One hundred eighty-five adolescent in-patients, consecutive admissions to a locked adolescent unit, were interviewed by a single interviewer. The subjects filled out a series of self report questionnaires and were also rated on an observational measure by the ward staff. In addition, 30 adolescents were interviewed by two raters simultaneously, in order to check the inter-rater reliability of this semi-structured interview. Twenty-three of the interviewees were re-interviewed after 6-12 months in order to assess the test-retest reliability. The majority of the Pearson correlation coefficients between the Child Suicide Potential Scale and parallel self report measures were also statistically significant. The internal consistencies of sections in the scale were high. The scale was found to have good parallel validity, by differentiating between suicidal and non-suicidal patients. The Pearson Correlation Coefficients between the two raters were markedly significant. The test-retest reliability was low. These results indicate that the Child Suicide Potential Scale is a reliable and fairly valid tool for the assessment of suicidal behavior in adolescent in-patients in Israel.