A preliminary validation of the Positive and Negative Suicide Ideation (PANSI) inventory with normal adolescent samples.

The present study evaluated the factor structure, reliability, and validity of the Positive and Negative Suicide Ideation (PANSI; Osman, Gutierrez, Kopper, Barrios, & Chiros, 1998) inventory in a sample of high-school youths. The PANSI is designed as a measure of risk and protective factors related to suicidal behavior. Participants (114 boys and 103 girls) completed the PANSI and other self-report instruments. Results of the confirmatory factor analyses supported adequate fit of the 2-factor oblique model to the sample data. Both factor scales attained adequate levels of reliability. Boys and girls did not differ in their responses to the PANSI scales. The PANSI scale scores were associated with scores from related measures. Logistic-regression analyses were used to evaluate the contributions of the PANSI scale scores to differentiate between the study groups. Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) analyses, using data from the psychiatric suicide risk and high-school control youths, were used to identify cutoff scores of 1.63 and 3.33 for the PANSI-negative and PANSI-positive scales, respectively.

The Positive and Negative Suicide Ideation (PANSI) inventory: psychometric evaluation with adolescent psychiatric inpatient samples.

In this study, we evaluated the factor structure of the Positive and Negative Suicide Ideation (PANSI) Inventory (Osman, Gutierrez, Kopper, Barrios, & Chiros, 1998) using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). The PANSI assesses the frequency of negative risk and protective factors that are related to suicidal behavior. Participants (n = 195) were adolescent psychiatric inpatients, ages 14 to 17 years, in the CFA. Results of the CFA supported the fit for the 2-factor oblique model as the best fitting model. The internal consistency reliability estimates of the 2 subscales, the PANSI-Negative (alpha = .96) and the PANSI-Positive (alpha = .89) were high. Scores on the PANSI scales differentiated between suicide attempters and controls and those at severe risk for suicide and controls. Correlational analyses provide strong support for the concurrent validity of the scales. The results of the logistic regression analyses provide support for the use of this new inventory as a risk measure of suicide-related behaviors: Scores on the PANSI scales (n = 54) also showed satisfactory evidence for test-retest reliability over a 2-week period.