By Gabriela Romero, B.A. and Anabelle Ornelas, B.A.
An Undergraduate Honors Thesis Defended 2012
While past research has demonstrated that suicide prevention gatekeeper trainings do indeed increase knowledge, no studies to date have examined the specific types of knowledge gained in an adolescent population (Aseltine & DeMartino, 2004; Aseltine et al., 2007; Cusimano & Sameem, 2011). In order to investigate how different types of knowledge may be related to suicide prevention outcomes, this study examined the relationships between procedural knowledge, declarative knowledge, and perceived behavioral control (PBC) of referral behavior following a school-based suicide prevention program. We hypothesized that initially following the SOS training, declarative knowledge will be significantly higher than procedural knowledge. In addition, from post-training to follow up, we hypothesized that participants' procedural knowledge will decline less than participants' declarative knowledge.Using Pearson-product moment correlations, our second set of hypotheses examined the relationships between the knowledge types and their respective PBCs. No significant differences were found between the various knowledge types at the different time-points. Furthermore, no significant relationships were found between knowledge and participants PBC. Findings suggest that more and better research is needed in the area of suicide prevention knowledge and its' relationship to intended training behaviors.