Measurement invariance of suicide screening measures across military branch

Validations of the Farsi versions of the depressive symptom inventory suicidality subscale (F‐DSI‐SS) and suicide rumination scale (F‐SRS) among Iranian college students

“…We postulated the original one-factor structure of the DSI-SS (F-DSI-SS) and SRS (F-SRS) would replicate in the Farsi versions (Metalsky & Joiner, 1997;Rogers, Law, et al, 2021;Stanley et al, 2021;H1). Consistent with previous research (Heath et al, 2022;Ribeiro et al, 2012;Rogers, Law, et al, 2021), we expected that the factor structures of the F-DSI-SS factor structures would be invariant across genders (H2) and that men would have higher scores than women on the F-DSI-SS, consistent with past research in the US (Joiner et al, 2002). Gender differences on F-SRS scores were examined but a priori hypotheses for these differences were not specified, given the lack of research on gender differences for this measure (H3).…”

“…Following this, we then conducted confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) in Jeffreys's Amazing Statistics Program version 0.14 (JASP;, 2020) to test the original one-factor structure of the F-DSI-SS scores and F-SRS scores in these Iranian college samples (H1). In line with previous research (Heath et al, 2022), we employed diagonally weighted least squares (DWLS) estimation that yields less biased and more accurate results than other procedures, especially with ordinal data (Li, 2016). The DWLS is equal to a robust weighted least squares estimator (WLSMV) in JASP.…”

“…However, it is unclear whether these gender differences in suicidality are due to measurement error, or ‘real’ differences in suicidality by gender (Milfont & Fischer, 2010). To our knowledge, measurement invariance of the DSI‐SS has only been conducted in the US, such as across military branches and risky drinking versus nonrisky drinking groups (Heath et al, 2022; Ribeiro et al, 2012). In these studies, the DSI‐SS displayed measurement invariance by groups, suggesting that this scale may show measurement invariance across other salient groups (e.g., gender) in international samples.…”

Social identity and the mental health and wellbeing of male veterans

“…Internal consistency of this measure was α = .66. Recent research suggests that this measure shows consistency across branches in screening for suicidal ideation along with other brief screeners (Heath et al, 2022).…”

“…The four items were: “Have you ever thought about or attempted to kill yourself?”, “How often have you thought about killing yourself in the past year?”, “Have you ever told somebody that you were going to commit suicide, or that you might do it?”, and “How likely is it that you will attempt suicide some day?” Internal consistency of this measure was α = .66. Recent research suggests that this measure shows consistency across branches in screening for suicidal ideation along with other brief screeners ( Heath et al, 2022 ).…”