The GNAT Measurement of University Students’ Implicit Suicide Ideation

The Go/No-go Association Task (GNAT) was used to measure the implicit suicidal ideation of 300 freshmen so as to find out about the characteristics and effects of the evaluation procedure for suicidal ideation.The results showed that GNAT implicit measurement gives a good performance in terms of reliability and validity.The incidence of implicit suicidal ideation among college freshmen was 38.8%.There was a sequential effect in GNAT measurement.The time difference between the“self-word+ positive words”and“self-word+ negative words”was found to be insignificant among the subjects, but the sensitive differences were significant.The time difference and sensitive difference between the “others’ words + positive words”and“others’ words+ negative words”were significant.The implicit self-response indicators, the implicit self-sensitive indicators and the implicit others’ sensitive indicators in terms of gender, nationality, whether or not a student cadre, whether or not an only child, the place of birth and the family structure are not significant.The indicators of implicit response were significantly different among these demographic variables.So GNAT can be used to measure the implicit suicidal ideation of college students.