# Evidence-based assessment/Instruments/Self-Injurious Thoughts and Behaviors Interview

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The Self-Injurious Thoughts and Behaviors Interview (SITBI) is a structured interview that assesses the presence, frequency, and characteristics of five self-injury-related constructs, including suicidal ideation, suicide plans, suicide gestures, suicide attempts, and non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI). This instrument can be administered by both researchers and clinicians. It has been widely used in research settings to assess adolescent and young adults samples. Its long form consists of 169 questions, and its short form consists of 69 questions.
The revised version of SITBI, Self-Injurious Thoughts and Behaviors Interview–Revised (SITBI-R), includes a broader range of self-injurious outcomes, like aborted and interrupted suicide attempts.

## Psychometrics
#### Reliability

Evaluation of reliability for the SITBI :
| Criterion | Rating (adequate, good, excellent, too good*) | Explanation with references |
| Interrater reliability | Excellent | Average kappa of .99 and r of 1.0; raters showed excellent to perfect agreement for all five self-injury related constructs. |
| Test-retest reliability | Good | Average kappa of .70; test-retest validity is good for suicidal ideation, suicide plan, suicide attempt, and NSSI, but poor for suicide gesture. |

#### Validity

Evaluation of validity and utility for the SITBI :
| Criterion | Rating (adequate, good, excellent, too good*) | Explanation with references |
| Content validity | Excellent | Covers suicidal ideation, suicide plans, suicide gestures, suicide attempts, and non-suicidal self-injury |
| Construct validity | Good | Shows convergent validity via correspondence between the SITBI and other measures of suicidal ideation, suicide attempt, and NSSI. |

## Scoring and Interpretation

The SITBI is comprised of five modules that correspond to the five types of Self-Injurious Thoughts and Behaviors (SITB): suicidal ideation, suicide plans, suicide gestures, suicide attempts, and non-suicidal self-injury. Each module begins with a screening question that asks about the lifetime presence of that thought or behavior. If the initial screening question is endorsed, then the module is included in the interview. If the initial screening item is denied, the questions from that module are skipped.
For each type of SITB, the SITBI assesses the frequency of that SITB in the respondent’s lifetime, past year, past month, and the onset age. The SITBI also assesses the severity of that thought or behavior, on average and at the worst point, and an open-ended question about the methods of self-injury used. The SITBI also assesses other characteristics, like self-reported function, peer influence, self-reported likelihood of engaging in SITB in the future, etc...
Most of the SITBI items ask for quantitative information like numbers of times, age, rating on a 0 (low/little) to 4 (very much/severe) scale. The rest of the items obtains qualitative and open-ended responses.

## Use in other populations

SITBI was translated into German., Korean, and Spanish, with research supporting each language version’s psychometric properties.

## Forms

* SITBI Short Form
* SITBI Long Form