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Data Management and Visualization - Assignment 4

Program:

Output:

Univariate graph for Parents’ control over choice of peers:

Around 85% of teens have parents who allow them to make their own decisions about the people they hang out with while the other 15% have parents who do not.

Univariate graph for having Smoked at least once:

Around 55% of teens have smoked at least once while the other 45% haven't.

Univariate graph for having drunk at least twice or thrice:

Around 55% of teens have drank at least twice or thrice while the other 45% haven't.

You can see in the graphs of all the variables that there are only two categories 0 (No) and 1 (Yes) as they are sufficient for our visualisation; it also makes it easier to compare data and make inferences at this stage. 

Univariate graph for alc_cig:

Around 42% of teens have both smoked and drank, 13% have only smoked, 13% have only drank and 31% have done neither.

Bivariate graph for Parents’ control over choice of peers and having smoked at least once:

Out of the total 3586 teens who smoke, approx. 3050 teens whose parents do not control who they hang out with are more likely to smoke. Approx. 450 teens smoke despite having their parents control who they hang out with. 

Therefore, it can be seen that teens whose parents are more lenient are more likely to smoke than those whose parents control the people they hang out with.

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Data Management and Visualization - Assignment 3

Program:

Output:

The values for the secondary variables agg and alc_cig are calculated for 6504 observations however the first 27 are shown in the table above.

In the variables above I have assigned the values 6 (refused) and 8 (don’t know) as missing values but have left the values 7 (legitimately skipped) and 9 (not applicable as such because they give an understanding as to why an observation was not recorded for that test unit. During this stage of data management the variables ‘Parents’ control over choice of peers’ was found to have 10 missing data, ‘Smoked at least once’ has 54 and ‘Drank at least twice or thrice’ has 59 missing data.

An aggregate of smoking and drinking was checked to see how many people indulged in both these activities, either one or none. The table of ‘Smoke and Drink’ shows 41.81% of teens to both smoke and drink while 31.27% of them do neither. 12.93% of them have only drunk and 13.33% of teens have only smoked. 0.66% of the teens were skipped or not applicable to this question.

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Data Management and Visualization - Assignment 2

Program:

Output:

The variables in the data set take the values as follows:

0=No

1=Yes

6=Refused

7=Legitimate skip

8=Don’t know

9=Not applicable

For the variable H1WP2, we can see that 14.48% of the teens had parents who didn’t allow them to decide their own friends and peer groups while 83.33% of the teens were allowed to do so. 0.05% of teens refused to answer the question. 2.01% of them were legitimately skipped as they had no parents, 0.11% didn’t know and 0.02% were not applicable for this question.

For the variable H1TO1, we see that 44.02% of teens have never smoked while 55.14% of them have smoked at least once in their life. 0.51% of teens refused to answer, 0.32% didn't know and 0.02% were not applicable for this question.

For the variable H1TO12, we see that 44.34% of teens have never had alcohol while 54.74% of them have drank before. 0.62% refused to answer the question, 0.29% didn't know and 0.02% were not applicable for this question.

This data set contains responses coded as unknown, skipped and refused which could be considered as missing data.

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Data Management and Visualization - Assignment 1

For my analytical study I have decided to work with the AddHealth data set. The vast amount of data available, representing the lives of several adolescents with respect to various aspects, is something I personally find very captivating to work with as it helps develop insights to the lives of us young adults. We often tend to generalise many things and form our own assumptions but with the data available to me now I can use data analysis to either prove or disprove many of these hypotheses and even make new discoveries.

My study will focus on the following research questions.

1) Is there any correlation between adolescent smokers and their parents’ level of control or influence over their decision making freedom while choosing who they hang out with?

Hypothesis: Adolescents whose parents let them deicide who they hang out with, with no questions or intervention,  are more likely to have tried smoking a cigarette

2)  Are people who smoke as likely to drink?

Hypothesis: Adolescents who smoke are as likely and willing to drink as well.

Since I was young, I’ve always noticed that my friends who drank or smoked had very lenient and carefree parents. A friend of mine who drank used to say that alcohol was fine but she would never smoke as she was completely against it but that soon changed as alcohol and smoking seemed to come hand in hand for her which made me question a lot of things.

With the data provided to me, I will now be able to check if a relation between these factors actually exists.

Variables: For my first variable I will be using H1WP2 (Do your parents let you make your own decisions about the people you hang out with) from Section 16 (Relations with parents) of the AddHealth codebook.

For my second variable I will be taking H1TO1 (Have you ever tried cigarette smoking, even just 1 or 2 puffs?) from Section 28 of the same codebook.

I will be taking H1TO12 (Have you had a drink of beer, wine, or liquor—not just a sip or a taste of someone else’s drink—more than 2 or 3 times in your life?) as my third variable also from the same codebook.

Literature Review:

A few of the search terms I made use of were: parental monitoring, adolescent smoking, substance abuse, parenting practices

Given below are few of the research papers I referred and went through on Google Scholar.

https://books.google.co.in/books?hl=en&lr=&id=fkoqnYgBke4C&oi=fnd&pg=PA259&dq=parental+monitoring+adolescent+substance&ots=ASBRAcRS_F&sig=2NECvdQauV0VM7TNR-j0__9WEIY&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=parental%20monitoring%20adolescent%20substance&f=false

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1746-1561.2001.tb01322.x

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/109019810102800109

The findings from these research papers have shown independent negative associations with smoking and drinking were found for parental involvement while peer pressure was positively associated with drinking especially for girls when compared to boys. The findings are consistent with the hypothesis that associating with deviant peers promotes and that authoritative parenting in turn protects against smoking and drinking. There also exists a positive correlation between smoking and drinking amongst adolescents.