Development and psychometric testing of the Protective Reasons Against Suicide Inventory for assessing older Chinese-speaking outpatients in primary care settings

Aim: To develop and psychometrically test the Protective Reasons against Suicide Inventory among older Chinese-speaking outpatients. Background: Tools currently exist to test reasons for living among individuals of all ages in western countries, but few are available to assess older adults’ protective reasons against suicide in Asia. Design: A cross-sectional survey to investigate protective reasons against suicide among older Chinese-speaking outpatients. Methods: The Protective Reasons against Suicide Inventory was developed based on individual interviews with 83 older outpatients in Taiwan, the literature and the authors’ clinical experiences. The resulting Inventory was examined in 2013 for content validity, face validity, construct validity, criterion-related validity, internal consistency reliability and test–retest reliability. Results: The Inventory had excellent content validity and face validity. Factor analysis yielded a seven-factor solution, accounting for 87·7% of the variance. Scores on the global Inventory and its subscales tended to be higher in outpatients diagnosed without suicidal ideation than in outpatients diagnosed with suicidal ideation, indicating good criterion validity. Inventory reliability and the intraclass correlation coefficient were satisfactory. Conclusions: The Protective Reasons against Suicide Inventory can be completed in 5 minutes and is perceived as easy to complete. Moreover, the Inventory yielded highly acceptable parameters for validity and reliability. The Protective Reasons against Suicide Inventory can be used to assess older Chinese-speaking outpatients for factors that protect them from attempting suicide.