THE SUICIDE INTERVENTION RESPONSE INVENTORY - A REVISION AND VALIDATION

The Suicide Intervention Response Inventory (SIRI) was developed by Ne imeyer and MacInnes (1981) to assess the ability of paraprofessional c ounselors to recognize appropriate responses to suicidal clients. Alth ough several studies have supported the validity of the scale, concern s have been raised about its ceiling effect when administered to more highly trained counselors. Psychometric improvements were therefore at tempted, and the original dichotomous scoring system was replaced with a Likert scale format, in the SIRI-2. Because respondents were requir ed to make more subtle judgments concerning the appropriateness of eac h response as defined by a criterion group of highly expert suicidolog ists, the ceiling effect that limited the use of the original measure was eliminated. Contract and discriminant validity were demonstrated i n both versions of the instrument. Internal consistency and test-retes t reliability showed improvement with the SIRI-2. Overall, the SIRI-2 shows promise as an index of suicide counseling effectiveness, especia lly among more skilled counselors.