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IntroductionMeasuring change in firearm storage is paramount to evaluating if interventions influence storage. Yet, there is little empirical basis for how to measure this change. This methodology study compared three different firearm storage measures using data from the Family Safety Net trial (n=46), a randomised controlled trial among firearm-owning adults in a rural Alaska Native community to encourage unloaded and locked firearm storage.MethodsThe team compared baseline and 1-month follow-up measures of household firearm storage: (1) cumulative firearm accessibility, (2) average firearm accessibility, and (3) number of unlocked firearms. All measures included information about locking status; the cumulative and average firearm accessibility measures incorporated additional information about ammunition. Unadjusted and adjusted generalised estimating equations evaluated the associations of the storage measures with adult perceptions of youth firearm access. Receiver operating characteristic curves from unadjusted models compared the measures’ abilities to predict adult perceptions of youth firearm access.ResultsAll household firearm storage measures were sensitive to change between baseline and 1 month follow-up (ps<0.05). These measures demonstrated a similar and moderate ability to predict adult perceptions of youth access (area under the curve range: 0.68–0.76).ConclusionThe number of unlocked firearms is an easily interpretable outcome when evaluating the effect of firearm storage interventions on storage practices, and it performed similarly well in predicting adults’ perceptions of youth firearm access as compared with more complex measures. Research that evaluates the ability of firearm storage measures to predict actual youth access will inform interventions to prevent youth firearm access.

The Alaska Native Community Resilience Study (ANCRS) is the central research project of the Alaska Native Collaborative Hub for Research on Resilience (ANCHRR), one of three American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) suicide prevention hubs funded by the National Institute of Mental Health. This paper describes the development of a structured interview to identify and measure community-level protective factors that may reduce suicide risk among youth in rural Alaska Native communities. Multilevel, iterative collaborative processes resulted in: a) expanded and refined constructs of community-level protection, b) clearer and broadly relevant item wording, c) respectful data collection procedures, and d) Alaska Native people from rural Alaska as primary knowledge-gathering interviewers. Moving beyond engagement to knowledge co-production in Alaska Native research requires flexibility, shared decision-making and commitment to diverse knowledge systems; this can result in culturally attuned methods, greater tool validity, new ways to understand complex issues and innovations that support community health.