The Self Injury Motivation Scale (SIMS) was validated and designed by Elizabeth Osuch to explore the motivations behind self-injurious behavior in the psychiatric inpatient population. The idea was to try to determine the inner state of the patients by asking them a set of questions. Once the answers had been collected then based on the given answers a determination could be made. This article will focus on the self injury motivation scale and how it’s used.

The Process
A list of questions which each have a scale associated with them is administered to the person under observation. The scale contains a list of reasons people have for injuring themselves. Where 0 represents a situation where it has never been a reason up to 10 where it has always been your reason. Any reason between 1 and 9 would represent a situation that has happened before just not all the time.
 
Example:

I have hurt myself
1. To protect Myself
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
(never)                 (always)

I have hurt myself
2. To “protect” important people in my life
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
(never)                 (always)

I have hurt myself
3. To diminish a feeling of being utterly alone
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
(never)                 (always)

I have hurt myself
4. To help me escape from uncomfortable feelings or moods
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
(never)                 (always)

I have hurt myself
5. It makes no sense to me: I don’t know why I do it and it seems to serve no function
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
(never)                 (always)

The typical test will have 36 questions like those posed above. The idea is to gain an objective view of the subject’s internal state at least as far as self injury is concerned. The questions were cultivated from studies done on self injurious behavior (SIB).

In Closing
This article has briefly touched on the information that has been garnered from academic studies done on (SIB). Since the studies found that the (SIMS) had good reliability and validity it would be correct to assume that it could be used in other similar social settings to gauge the degree of self injurious behavior inherent in the person taking the test. In fact the only negative correlation found was with age demographic. So given the research the Self Injury Motivation Scale seems to be a good indicator of potential (SIB).