Date
7-22-2025
Department
School of Education
Degree
Doctor of Philosophy in Higher Education Administration (PhD)
Chair
Rebecca Lunde
Keywords
Sociodemographic factors related to suicide, a suicide study at 2-year colleges, Willingness to Intervene Against Suicide
Disciplines
Educational Psychology
Recommended Citation
Smith, Floydena S., "The Relationship Between Attitude Toward Suicide and Related Sociodemographic Factors That Influence the Use of Mental Health Resources Among Undergraduate College Students: A Predictive Correlational Study" (2025). Doctoral Dissertations and Projects. 7186.
https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/doctoral/7186
Abstract
The purpose of this quantitative, predictive, correlational research study was to identify the relationship between attitude toward willingness to intervene against suicide scores and the linear combination of sex and age among undergraduate students. Higher education institutions must now determine if these sociodemographic variables prompted undergraduate college students to seek out interventions and use mental health services in case of suicide. The target undergraduate population included 93 full-time students between the ages of 18-45 from a postsecondary institution. A convenience sample was used to obtain 93 students, but only 80 participants in the study completed the survey in its entirety. The Willingness to Intervene Against Suicide Questionnaire was uploaded to Survey Monkey and emailed to participants, and then, multilinear regression statistics were used to compute and analyze scores from the questionnaire. The overall regression model associating age and sex assigned at birth with the Subjective Norms Subscale scores was significant F(2, 77) = 3.98, p ≤ 0.005. The null hypothesis was rejected. This significant result was driven by a positive relationship between age and Subjective Norms (B = 2.65, SEM = .941, p = .02). Similar findings were observed for Perceived Behavioral Control, F(2,77) = 3.94, p = .02, with age being the only significant predictor of Perceived Behavioral Control scores (B = 3.17, SEM = 1.19, p = .009). The other two subscales, Attitude and Intention, were unrelated to age and sex assigned at birth. The WIS sum score model was significant, F (2,77) = 5.78, p = .01, but age was the only significant predictor (B = 10.67, SEM = 3.16). The results indicated there was no correlation between assigned sex at birth, age, and willingness to intervene against suicide scores. The study may need to be ongoing to see how the relationship between variables changes over a significant period of time.
