Factor Structure of Attitudes Toward Suicide (ATTS) of Adults: Based on a Nationwide Survey in South Korea

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVES: Suicide is a complex phenomenon not only caused by the individual's mental illness and economic situation, but also occurred in sociocultural contexts and relationships around the individual. Therefore, the attitudes, which include collective norms, thoughts and feelings of a population, toward suicide play a fundamental role in the prevention of suicide. Factor structure of Attitudes Toward Suicide (ATTS), developed by Renberg, is also various in different sociocultural contexts. This is the first study to investigate factor structure of ATTS along with nationwide sample of Korean adults.METHODS: This study analyzed the factor structure and reliability of ATTS in 1500 regionally stratified Korean adults. Exploratory factor analysis was performed by using principal axis factoring and varimax rotation.RESULTS: The selection of 33 ATTS items based on internal consistency and communality was conducted. Five factors were analyzed, which were named ‘Good reason,’ ‘Negative gaze,’ ‘Predictability,’ ‘Means of escape,’ and ‘Common secret,’ respectively. Explained total variance was 41.94%, and the internal consistency ranged from 0.516 to 0.740.CONCLUSIONS: Each of the five factors contains different semantic dimensions. Consistent with previous studies, factors containing permissive attitude toward suicide was high in those with history of suicidal thought and of suicide attempt. It is notable that the ‘Good reason’ showed higher score in elderly. This may be related to socioeconomic or physical adversities which have been considered the major cause of suicide in elderly.