STUDY DESIGN: The study design is a cross-sectional self-report study conducted across 42 countries.
METHODS: A cross-sectional, self-report study was conducted in 42 countries, with a total of 82,243 participants included in the final data set.
RESULTS: The study provides an overview of suicide ideation rates across 42 countries and confirms the structural validity of the P4 screener. The findings indicated that sexual and gender minority individuals exhibited higher rates of suicidal ideation. The P4 screener showed adequate reliability, convergence, and discriminant validity, and a cutoff score of 1 is recommended to identify individuals at risk of suicidal behavior.
CONCLUSIONS: The study supports the reliability and validity of the P4 suicide screener across 42 diverse countries, highlighting the importance of using a cross-cultural suicide risk assessment to standardize the identification of high-risk individuals and tailoring culturally sensitive suicide prevention strategies.
METHODS: We used global survey data from 82,243 individuals (Mean age=32.39 years; 40.3 % men, 57.0 % women, 2.8 % non-binary, and 0.6 % other genders) participating in the International Sexual Survey (ISS; https://internationalsexsurvey.org/) across 42 countries and 26 languages. Participants completed the SDS-3, as well as questions regarding sociodemographic characteristics, including gender identity and sexual orientation.
RESULTS: Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) supported a unidimensional factor structure for the SDS-3, and multi-group CFA (MGCFA) suggested that this factor structure was invariant across countries, languages, gender identities, and sexual orientations. Cronbach's α for the unidimensional score was 0.83 (range between 0.76 and 0.89), and McDonald's ω was 0.84 (range between 0.76 and 0.90). Participants who did not experience sexual problems had significantly lower SDS-3 total scores (M = 2.99; SD=2.54) compared to those who reported sexual problems (M = 5.60; SD=3.00), with a large effect size (Cohen's d = 1.01 [95 % CI=-1.03, -0.98]; p < 0.001).
CONCLUSION: The SDS-3 has a unidimensional factor structure and appears to be valid and reliable for measuring sexual distress among individuals from different countries, gender identities, and sexual orientations.