Concordance of proxy informants reported data and self-reported data of Life Event Scale in Suicide Prevention Research / 中国神经精神疾病杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To conduct concordance test on Life Event Scale reported by different informants and the suicide-attempters themselves in Chinese suicide research. Methods In this retrospective study, 104 attempted suicide cases and 147 suicide cases were included. Each case had two informants. One was family member, and the other was associate (friends, neighbors, etc.). Suicide attempters (only for attempted suicide cases) were also interviewed by qualified psychiatrists. Life Event Scale was administered to each respondent to obtain life events experienced by the case before the suicidal behavior. Kappa and Intraclass Correlation Coefficient (ICC) were used to compare the suicide attempters' self-reports with two informants' reports, and to present the concordance of two informants' reports for suicides. Results For attempted suicide group, agreements were nearly moderate or better for life events on marital relation, physical illness, family relation, love, birth or death of family members (Kappa≥0.39); Proxy-based chronic stress and acute stress scores were significantly lower than subject-reports (ICC:0.11~0.24, P<0.01).For suicide group, the agreements between the two informants' reports were moderate or better on death of spouse, work/study or physical illness (Kappa≥0.49); The agreement for chronic stress score was fair (ICC=0.47). Conclusions The results have demonstrated that proxy-based data on life events are valid if structured and objective scales are used.