title: Validity of suicidality items from the Youth Risk Behavior Survey in a high school sample.
abstract: The Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) is used by the United States Centers for Disease Control to estimate rates of suicidal thoughts and behaviors in adolescents. This study investigated the validity of the YRBS suicidality items by examining their relationship to criterion variables including loneliness, anxiety, depression, substance use, and other suicidality items. Participants were 386 high-school students. YRBS items assessing suicidal thoughts and behaviors demonstrated good convergent and discriminant validity.
authors.affiliation: University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada. alexism@psych.ubc.ca
authors.forename: Alexis
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: May
authors.forename: E David
authors.initials: ED
authors.lastname: Klonsky
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000294:Adolescent Behavior / Q000523:psychology*; D001007:Anxiety; D001955:British Columbia; D003863:Depression; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008132:Loneliness; D008297:Male; D011594:Psychometrics; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012306:Risk; D012307:Risk Factors; D012309:Risk-Taking; D012574:Schools; D013223:Statistics as Topic; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology*; D019966:Substance-Related Disorders; D059020:Suicidal Ideation; D013405:Suicide / Q000523:psychology*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires