Investigating dimensionality of Eskin’s attitudes toward Suicide Scale with Mokken Scaling and Confirmatory Factor Analysis.

Attitudes toward suicide are often investigated by means of questionnaires, most of which are overly long or of low psychometric quality. Eskin’s (2004) Attitudes Towards Suicide Scale is short and first investigations suggest good psychometric properties, but its factor structure has scarcely been explored. Hence, we examined this instrument by a data-analytic approach that combines Mokken scaling and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Results revealed 6 factors, of which 1 possessed only weak measurement properties. CFAs indicated only borderline fit of models found in prior research, but adequate fit for the scale structures revealed by Mokken scaling. Psychometric properties of these scales were satisfactory. Both the instrument as well as the methodological approach presented here can be recommended for further research.