Cross-Cultural Investigation of a New Set of Scales for the Suicide Opinion Questionnaire

There are a number of alternate ways to score the Suicide Opinion Questionnaire (SOQ). Two methods were compared in this study, a set of eight scales developed by content analysis, and a set of five scales developed by factor analysis; two samples, one from the United States ( N=218), and one from Taiwan ( N=291) were assessed. On all SOQ scales, significant mean differences were obtained between U.S. and Taiwanese samples. The patterns of intercorrelations suggest that despite their factor analytic genesis, several of the SOQ-F scales correlate significantly with each other as well as with the SOQ-C scales. The results support the cross-cultural applicability and reliability of the SOQ, and suggest that although the SOQ-F scales may represent interesting variables, they are not superior psychometrically to the original content scales.