Validity and Reliability of the Attitudes Towards Suicide (ATTS) Scale for Korean Adults

Sunah Kim; Jin Young Park; Soo Jung Lee; Ran Keum; Go-Un Kim

doi:10.12934/jkpmhn.2019.28.4.382

Journal List > J Korean Acad Psychiatr Ment Health Nurs > v.28(4) > 1140630

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Kim, Park, Lee, Keum, and Kim: Validity and Reliability of the Attitudes Towards Suicide (ATTS) Scale for Korean Adults

Original Article

Journal of Korean Academy of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing 2019; 28(4): 382-392.

Published online: 31 December 2019

DOI: https://doi.org/10.12934/jkpmhn.2019.28.4.382

Validity and Reliability of the Attitudes Towards Suicide (ATTS) Scale for Korean Adults

Sunah Kim¹

, Jin Young Park²

, Soo Jung Lee³

, Ran Keum⁴

, Go-Un Kim²

¹Professor, College of Nursing · Mo-Im Kim Nursing Research Institute, Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea.

²Doctoral Student, College of Nursing, Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea.

³Assistance Professor, Department of Nursing, Kyungnam University, Changwon, Korea.

⁴Professor, Department of Nursing, Baekseok Culture University, Cheonan, Korea.

Corresponding author: Kim, Go-Un. College of Nursing, Yonsei University, 50-1 Yonsei-ro, Seodaemun-gu, Seoul 03722, Korea. Tel: +82-2-2228-3368, Fax: +82-2-364-5027, kgudfc@naver.com

Received 12 November 2019 Revised 3 December 2019 Accepted 15 December 2019

The Korean Academy of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing

(open-access):

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Purpose

The aims of this study was to verify the validity and reliability of the Attitudes Towards Suicide (ATTS) scale for Korean adults.

Methods

Participants were 441 adults in South Korea, who completed in a self-reported online survey of ATTS. A total of 37 items were used for conducting item analyses, exploratory factor analyses, and confirmatory factor analyses, as well as examining the internal consistency.

Results

Based on findings of item reduction and exploratory factor analyses, three factors were identified based on 16 items, such as ‘acceptability (7 items)‘, ‘understandability (5 items)‘, and ‘tabooing (4 items)‘. These factors accounted for 49.4% of the total variance of ATTS. Known-groups, item convergent, and item discriminant validity were confirmed; Fitness of the modified mode was acceptable (χ²=375.51, CFI=.84, TLI=.81, GFI=.90, AGFI=.87, RMSEA=.08). The Cronbach's α coefficient for the 16 items was .82.

Conclusion

Three factors of the short version of ATTS may be useful to evaluate the suicidal attitudes of Korean adults effectively and accurately. Our study findings suggest that suicide attitude questionaries need to be constantly revised to consider socio-cultural environment.

Keywords: Attitude to death, Suicide, Validation study, Surveys and questionnaires

Figures and Tables

Table 1

General Characteristics of Participants (N=441)

Table 2

Factor Analysis of the Attitudes Towards Suicide (N=441)

F1=acceptability; F2=understandability; F3=tabooing; KMO=Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin; Bold numbers indicates that they were higher than the cut-off point of 0.50, indicating that the sample size was adequate for factor loading.

Table 3

Known Groups Validity of the Attitudes Towards Suicide (N=441)

^†post-hoc.

Table 4

Multi-trait / Multi-item Correlation Matrix for Item Convergent and Item Discriminant Validity (N=441)

Bold numbers indicates that they were higher than the cut-off point of 0.40, indicating that the correlation coefficients between the sub-factor and inter-items.

Table 5

Reliability Coefficients and Inter-scale Correlations of the Attitudes Towards Suicide (ATTS)

( )=Cronbach's α of each subscale; ^**p<.01.

Notes

^{CONFLICTS OF INTEREST} The authors declared no conflict of interest.

Appendix

Korean Version of the Attitudes Toward Suicide Scale-Revised (Adults)

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ORCID iDs

Sunah Kim
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5922-6598

Jin Young Park
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7345-5178

Soo Jung Lee
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5752-7482

Ran Keum
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1235-1030

Go-Un Kim
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7191-5134

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