TY - JOUR PY - 1971// TI - Suicide and Homicide: Bias in the Examination of the Relationship Between Suicide and Homicide Rates JO - Social psychiatry A1 - Lester, David SP - 80 EP - 82 VL - 6 IS - 2 N2 -

The relationship between the incidences of suicide and homicide was examined by means of correlations over time, locale, and status categories. The resulting correlations differed greatly for the three methods of correlation. For each type of correlation, correlation coefficients were computed for different sex-by-race subgroups of the population and the magnitude and direction of the associations were found to vary greatly for the different subgroups. It was noted that previous investigators of the relationship between suicide and homicide have presented only certain of the correlations illustrated here and thus are guilty of bias in their presentation of data. It was concluded that no available theory was able to explain the complex pattern of correlations found here and the more fruitful approach to the study of the relationship between suicide and homicide was through a socio-psychological study of the individuals concerned.

LA - SN - 0037-7813 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF00578034 ID - ref1 ER -