Abstract
Purpose The purpose of this study is to develop a prediction model and decision rules for the elderly's suicidal ideation based on the Korean Welfare Panel survey data. By utilizing this data, we obtained many decision rules to predict the elderly's suicide ideation. Design/methodology/approach This study used classification analysis to derive decision rules to predict on the basis of decision tree technique. Weka 3.8 is used as the data mining tool in this study. The decision tree algorithm uses J48, also known as C4.5. In addition, 66.6% of the total data was divided into learning data and verification data. We considered all possible variables based on previous studies in predicting suicidal ideation of the elderly. Finally, 99 variables including the target variable were used. Classification analysis was performed by introducing sampling technique through backward elimination and data balancing. Findings As a result, there were significant differences between the data sets. The selected data sets have different, various decision tree and several rules. Based on the decision tree method, we derived the rules for suicide prevention. The decision tree derives not only the rules for the suicidal ideation of the depressed group, but also the rules for the suicidal ideation of the non-depressed group. In addition, in developing the predictive model, the problem of over-fitting due to the data imbalance phenomenon was directly identified through the application of data balancing. We could conclude that it is necessary to balance the data on the target variables in order to perform the correct classification analysis without over-fitting. In addition, although data balancing is applied, it is shown that performance is not inferior in prediction rate when compared with a biased prediction model.
