Ladislav Kristoufek
(Warwick Business School)
Is suicidal behavior reflected in online activity? Evidence
from England and Wales
(joint with H. S. Moat and T. Preis, both WBS)
Identifying causes of suicide attempts and committed suicides themselves has long been a worrying concern in
psychology and psychiatry as well as in social sciences such as demography, sociology and economics. In recent years,
study of online activity of Internet users has proven fruitful in various fields ranging from medicine, ecology and
epidemiology to linguistics, politology, sociology and economic, financial and business sciences. We provide a careful
study of interconnection between committed suicides and related online searches in England and Wales between 2004
and 2011. Models based on Google data significantly improve the base models for suicides. Further inspection uncovers
that the “depression" term is negatively related to suicide occurrences whereas the “suicide" term shows positive
relation. Both effects vanish after 3 months. Overall quality of models is higher for men and overall suicides compared
to women. Online search activity thus provides a significant addition to suicides modeling.
Thursday 20th November 2014, 2.30 p.m.— 3.50 p.m.
Library, 3rd Floor Extension, Wolfson Research Exchange Area,
Seminar Room 1
Join us for light refreshments (coffee/tea and biscuits) before the Forum at 2.15 p.m.
This event is free and open to public: go.warwick.ac.uk/draw