Reasons for living are protective factors against suicidal behavior in adolescents. One of the most useful measures to assess them is the Reasons for Living Inventory for Adolescents (RFL-A) developed by Osman et al. The goal of this study was to examine the psychometric properties of its Portuguese version of the RFL-A. To this end, we recruited 512 high school adolescents (mean age = 16.7 years), who completed the RFL-A, a Suicidal Ideation Questionnaire, and a hopelessness scale. Exploratory factor analysis replicated the original five-factor model and confirmatory factor analysis obtained satisfactory adjustment values. The RFL-A shows good reliability (internal consistency and temporal stability) as well as good convergent, discriminant, and concurrent validities. These results indicate that the RFL-A is a valid and reliable measure to study protective factors against suicidal behaviors in Portuguese adolescents.
Keywords: adolescents; protective factors; reasons for living; suicide prevention; suicide risk assessment.