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. 185 adolescent inpatients were interviewed by a single interviewer. In addition, 30 adolescents were interviewed by two raters simultaneously. 23 of the interviewees were reinterviewed after 6-12 months. The internal consistencies of sections in the scale were high. The scale was found to have good parallel validity, by differentiating between suicidal & non-suicidal patients. The Pearson Correlation Coefficients between the 2 raters were markedly significant. The test-retest reliability was low. Results indicate the Child Suicide Potential Scale is a reliable & fairly valid tool for the assessment of suicidal behaviour in adolescent inpatients in Israel. (15 refs.)