Evaluating the Psychometric Properties of the Self-Injurious Thoughts and Behaviors Interview-Jail (SITBI-J) Version

ABSTRACT

Suicides, and related self-injurious thoughts and behaviors (SITBs), are among the leading public health concerns in American jails. Despite suicide being the leading cause of death in jails, there is little information about the prevalence of SITBs among incarcerated individuals. The Self-Injurious Thoughts and Behaviors Interview (SITBI) was developed to assess the presence, frequency, and characteristics of self-injurious thoughts and behaviors. The SITBI has been implemented and validated in a variety of clinical and research settings, but not among incarcerated individuals. With survey data collected from two samples of incarcerated individuals from Florida and Texas, single-item reliability, graded item response modeling, and validity tests are used to evaluate the psychometric properties of an adapted version of the SITBI, the SITBI-J (Self-Injurious Thoughts and Behaviors Interview – Jail). The SITBI-J demonstrated strong single-item coefficients (coefficient range from r_x = .33–.99).: The SITBI-J showed strong construct validity when assessed using convergent tests with Beck’s Hopelessness Scale, and discriminate validity against a theoretically dissimilar measure. Results demonstrate the potential of the SITBI-J for correctional settings. Future research should continue to test and validate the SITBI-J in other jail facilities.

KEYWORDS:

• SITBI
• self-injury
• jail
• assessment
• reliability
• validity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Prisons in the US house individuals’ following a criminal conviction, usually with sentences longer than 14 months, and are thought to be less dangerous, more organized environments than jails. This is attributable, in part, to greater social stability among this correctional population and potential access to resources within these facilities (Lambert et al., 2018; D. C. May et al., 2014).

2. The mental health and administrative segregation units at both facilities where not allowed to be surveyed, per facility protocol. We did ask for permission and was not granted access.

3. Both facilities allowed the participants free access to phones to call the research team post-study completion, should they have any questions. To date, I have only been contacted by one individual from Texas asking to see published results.

4. To the best of our knowledge, no individual contacted the on staff psychologist as a result of participation in this study.

5. The response rate is calculated from known eligible participants, it was unknown how many individuals were housed in the two excluded units on the day of collection, so that number was NOT excluded from this calculation.

6. This study came out in 2020, a year after data collection occurred for the current study.