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 Questionn aire (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 differe nces were obtained between U.S. and Taiwanese samples. The patterns of inte rcorrelations suggest that despite their factor analytic genesis, several o f 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 repr esent interesting variables, they are not superior psychometrically to the original content scales.