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Engagement of risky behaviour: A case study of pregnancy, AIDs and STD which may lead to suicide- week3

I rename the responses for H1MO3, H1RP3 and  H1SU1 to create three new variable GUILTY, VIRUS and  SUICIDE.

 For GUILTY which simply means “IF YOU HAD SEXUAL INTERCOURSE; AFTERWARD; YOU WOULD FEEL GUILTY?”, the high percentage of the respondent (31.89%) said they can’t answer the question because they were married or less than 15 years old  (too young age for an early sexual debut). 

For VIRUS which simply means “ IF YOU GOT THE AIDS VIRUS; YOU WOULD SUFFER A GREAT DEAL? ”, 42.87% of the respondents strongly agree that they would suffer a great deal if they had AIDS virus, 16.37% agree, 2.41% disagree, 5.21% neither agree nor disagree and the rest either refused to answer, don’t know, strongly disagree or  can't answer because they were married or less than 15 years old.

For SUICIDE which implies “DURING THE PAST 12 MONTHS; DID YOU EVER SERIOUSLY THINK ABOUT COMMITTING SUICIDE?”, the most common endorsed answer was “NO” (86.32%), meaning that people generally don’t really think about committing suicide even though they engage in any risky social behaviour. 

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Engagement of risky behaviour: A case study of pregnancy, AIDs and STD which may lead to suicide- week2

6504 random observations, all of which were adolescents  read from the data set MYDATA.ADDHEALTH_PDS  were asked the following question: “ If you had sexual intercourse, afterward,  will you  feel guilty? “ Of the total number, about 31.89 % chose category 7 which was a legitimate skip, and about 10.70% strongly agreed in category 1. 18.74% adolescents disagree with the opinion.

For the next question, the same set of students were asked to estimate  their risks of pregnancy, AIDS, and sexually transmitted diseases. They were asked the following question  “If you got the AIDS virus, you would suffer a great deal.” About 31.35% skipped the question [married or age lesser than or equal to 15] . A very high percentage of 42.87% strongly agreed to the fact that they would suffer a great deal if they have AID virus.

For the next question, "During the past 12 months, did you ever seriously think about committing suicide?”  Committing suicide  because they felt guilty for having sex, or fear of suffering a great deal after having AID virus. The majority (86.32) skipped the question, and about 12.62percent of students fell into category 1.

[vikkytom-blog]

Engagement of risky behaviour: A case study of pregnancy, AIDs and STD which may lead to suicide.

Having gone through the codebook of National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions (NESARC), the largest and most ambitious comorbidity study ever conducted, I have decided to examine the transitive association between motivation to engage in risk behaviour (INH08PUB), pregnancy, AID and STD risk perception (INH17PUB) and suicide (INH33PUB). I am not quite certain of the variables I will be using to accomplish this task, so for now I will include all of the relevant variables in my personal codebook.

Sexual intercourse before marriage coined out as a result of motivation to engage in risk factors is the fundamental part of the objective of the study. I choose this because the issue of sexuality has been primarily studied with a focus on its potential public health issues, such as sexually transmitted disease, human immunodeficiency viruses which in turns leads to AID  when humans have a  progressive failure of the immune system , unwanted pregnancies, and its comorbidity with other risky behaviors. This is of personal interest to me because unsafe sex is a common practice among adolescents in Sub- saharan Africa  resulting in unwanted pregnancy, abortion, STD, HIV and unfortunately in some cases leads to suicide. 

Sexual risk behaviors place youth at risk for HIV infection, other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), and unintended pregnancy according to CDC (https://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/sexualbehaviors/index.htm). Brooke A. Ammerman et al  establish that research has supported an association between suicidal thoughts / behaviors and risk-taking, which may be particularly strong during adolescence when risk-taking is known to increase. Their study examined the simultaneous influence of multiple risk-taking behaviors (i.e., risky sexual behavior, tobacco/alcohol use, illicit drug use, delinquent behavior, violent behavior) on adolescent suicidal thoughts / behaviors.(doi: 10.1080/15374416.2016.1220313). R D Govender et al pointed out that globally, suicide and HIV/AIDS remain two of the greatest healthcare issues, particularly in low- and middle-income countries where approximately 85% of suicides occur (https://sajhivmed.org.za/index.php/hivmed/article/view/79/122).

Some typical research question that can be asked and may be answered in the study for example are:

(a) Is feeling guilty as a result of having sexual intercourse associated with  suicide?

(b) Is quitting school as a result of getting someone pregnant associated with  suicide?

(c)Suffering a great deal as a result of having AID/STD associated with suicide?

(d) Is having sexual intercourse just for fun associated with unwanted pregnancy and in thus, associated with suicide?