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Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
Cognitive instruments, especially those with emotional components, may be useful to
address the limitations of self-report scales commonly used to assess suicidal ideation. The aim of
this study was to develop an emotional Stroop test for screening suicidal ideation in Portugal. The
project was developed in five phases using different samples for each phase. The first two phases
were focused on the formulation of the potential words that would compose the slides. For this
purpose, five biology teachers (neutral slide) and five mental health professionals (positive and
negative slides) were invited to help choose the words that were most representative for each slide.
The third phase validated the words defined in the previous phase. In this phase, 300 university
students participated (Mage = 21.66; SD = 3.67; 68% female). They rated the words on a Likert scale in
terms of their frequency of use, familiarity, level of understanding, and degree of image evocation.
In the fourth phase, the researchers developed the complete version of the test, which consists of
three slides with neutral, positive, and negative emotional stimuli, consecutively. Finally, in the fifth
phase, we validated the final version of the test through a comparative study between a clinical group
and a non-clinical group, each one composed by 50 participants (Mage = 32; SD = 9.70; 55% female).
Results indicated that the clinical group demonstrated significantly higher scores for depression and
suicidal ideation and lower scores for the three Stroop tasks. Words related to negative emotions
were strongly correlated with suicidal ideation. Finally, the three Stroop slides explained 74.1% of the
variance in suicidal ideation. These findings suggest that this test can be a viable complementary
measure in the psychological assessment of suicide ideation, and intervention in the field of suicide
prevention in Portugal.
Description
Keywords
Emotional Stroop test Screening Suicidal ideation Suicidal ideation - Portugal