Abstract
BackgroundLife event assessment is an important part in psychological autopsy, and how to integrate its proxy data from two informants is a major methodological issue which needs solving.MethodsTotally 416 living subjects and their two informants were interviewed by psychological autopsy, and life events were assessed with Paykel’s Interview for Recent Life Events. Validities of integrated proxy data using six psychological autopsy information reconstruction methods were evaluated, with living subjects’ self-reports used as gold-standard criteria.ResultsFor all the life events, average value of Youden Indexes for proxy data by type C information reconstruction method (choosing positive value from two informants) was larger than other five methods’. For family life related events, proxy data by type 1st information reconstruction method were not significantly different from living subjects’ self-reports (P = 0.828). For all other life events, proxy data by type C information reconstruction method were not significantly different from the gold-standard.ConclusionsChoosing positive value is a relatively better method for integrating dichotomous (positive vs. negative) proxy data from two informants in life event assessment in psychological autopsy, except for family life related events. In that case, using information provided by 1st informants (mainly family member) is recommended.
Highlights
Life event assessment is an important part in psychological autopsy, and how to integrate its proxy data from two informants is a major methodological issue which needs solving
How to integrate proxy data from different informants? This is an important methodological issue confronted by suicide researchers in psychological autopsy [6, 11,12,13,14]
Subjects This study is a part of case–control psychological autopsy undertaken in residents of rural China
Summary
Life event assessment is an important part in psychological autopsy, and how to integrate its proxy data from two informants is a major methodological issue which needs solving. Suicide is an important global public health issue: more than 800,000 people die by suicide each year worldwide. To reconstruct the information of suicide case, a single informant might not be sufficient. There is no specific criteria for determining how many informants should be included in a psychological autopsy. How to integrate proxy data from different informants? This is an important methodological issue confronted by suicide researchers in psychological autopsy [6, 11,12,13,14]. Whether proxy data can be representative of that of the target depends on the method of information reconstruction
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