Construction and Validation of an Analytical Grid about Video Representations of Suicide (“MoVIES”)

Christophe Gauld, Marielle Wathelet, François Medjkane, Nathalie Pauwels, Thierry Bougerol and Charles-Edouard Notredame
Additional contact information
Christophe Gauld: CHU Grenoble Alpes, F-38000 Grenoble, France
Marielle Wathelet: Department of Public Health, CHU Lille, F-59000 Lille, France
François Medjkane: Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, CHU Lille, F-59000 Lille, France
Nathalie Pauwels: Fédération de Recherche en Psychiatrie et Santé Mentale des Hauts-de-France, F-59000 Lille, France
Thierry Bougerol: CHU Grenoble Alpes, F-38000 Grenoble, France
Charles-Edouard Notredame: Fédération de Recherche en Psychiatrie et Santé Mentale des Hauts-de-France, F-59000 Lille, France

IJERPH, 2019, vol. 16, issue 15, 1-11

Abstract: Background. Exposure to fictional suicide scenes raises concerns about the risk of suicide contagion. However, researchers and clinicians still lack empirical evidence to estimate this risk. Here, we propose a theory-grounded tool that measures properties related to aberrant identification and suicidal contagion of potentially harmful suicide scenes. Methods. The items of the Movies and Video: Identification and Emotions in reaction to Suicide (MoVIES) operationalize the World Health Organization’s recommendations for media coverage of suicide, and were adapted and completed with identification theory principles and cinematographic evidence. Inter-rater reliability (Cohen’s kappa) and internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha) were estimated and optimized for two series of 19 and 30 randomly selected movies depicting a suicide scene. The validity of the scale in predicting identification with the suicidal character was tested in nine unknowledgeable participants who watched seven suicide movie scenes each. Results . The MoVIES indicated satisfying psychometric properties with kappas measured at 0.7 or more for every item and a global internal consistency of [? = 0.05]. The MoVIES score significantly predicted participants’ strength of identification independently from their baseline empathy ((? = 0.20), p < 0.05). Conclusions . The MoVIES is available to scholars as a valid, reliable, and useful tool to estimate the amount of at-risk components of fictional suicidal behavior depicted in films, series, or television shows.

Keywords: suicide; Werther effect; psychology of cinema; identification; emotion; vulnerability; imitation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/15/2780/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/15/2780/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:16:y:2019:i:15:p:2780-:d:254533

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().