A Shortened Screener Version of the Cultural Assessment of Risk for Suicide

Abstract

The current study aimed to establish a shortened version of the Cultural Assessment of Risk for Suicide (CARS) measure that can be more widely utilized under time constraints in clinical and applied settings. Based on a sample of 485 adults, confirmatory factor analysis, bivariate correlations, and Receiver-Operating Characteristic analyses were employed to determine the most psychometrically valid shortened version. The 14-item, 8-factor CARS screener (CARS-S) evidenced high reliability, high correlation with the original full version of the CARS questionnaire, and high convergent validity with measures of other suicide-related constructs of depression, hopelessness, suicidal ideation, and lifetime suicide attempts. The suggested clinical cut-off is 38.5. The shortened CARS-S offers a time-efficient assessment of cultural suicide risk factors.

Keywords:

• assessment
• culture
• diversity
• screener
• suicide

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Joyce Chu

Joyce Chu, Department of Psychology, Palo Alto University, Palo Alto, California, USA.

Brandon Hoeflein

Brandon Hoeflein, Department of Psychology, Palo Alto University, Palo Alto, California, USA.

Peter Goldblum

Peter Goldblum, Department of Psychology, Palo Alto University, Palo Alto, California, USA.

Dorothy Espelage

Dorothy Espelage, Department of Psychology, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, USA.

Jordan Davis

Jordan Davis, Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, USA

Bruce Bongar

Bruce Bongar, Palo Alto University, Palo Alto, California, USA.