Application of group smoothly clipped absolute deviation method in identifying correlates of psychiatric distress among college students

College students are at an increased risk of psychiatric distress. So, identifying its important correlates using more reliable statistical models, instead of inefficient traditional variable selection methods like stepwise regression, is of great importance. The objective of this study was to inves...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:BMC psychiatry 2020-05, Vol.20 (1), p.198-198, Article 198
Main Authors: Arayeshgari, Mahya, Tapak, Leili, Roshanaei, Ghodratollah, Poorolajal, Jalal, Ghaleiha, Ali
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Addictive behaviors
Behavior
Cigarettes
College students
Drug abuse
Fines & penalties
LASSO
Mathematical models
Mental disorders
Mental health care
Methods
Parameter estimation
Personal information
Psychiatric distress
Psychiatry
Questionnaires
Risk factors
Smoothly clipped absolute deviation
Statistical analysis
Stress (Psychology)
Substance-related disorders
Suicide
Suicides & suicide attempts
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:College students are at an increased risk of psychiatric distress. So, identifying its important correlates using more reliable statistical models, instead of inefficient traditional variable selection methods like stepwise regression, is of great importance. The objective of this study was to investigate correlates of psychiatric distress among college students in Iran; using group smoothly clipped absolute deviation method (SCAD). A number of 1259 voluntary college students participated in this cross-sectional study (Jan-May 2016) at Hamadan University of Medical Sciences, Iran. The data were collected using a self-administered questionnaire consisting of demographic information, a behavioral risk factors checklist and the GHQ-28 questionnaire (with a cut-off of 23 to measure psychiatric distress, recommended by the Iranian version of the questionnaire). Penalized logistic regression with a group-SCAD regularization method was used to analyze the data (α = 0.05). The majority of students were aged 18-25 (87.61%), and 60.76% of them were female. About 41% of students had psychiatric distress. Significant correlates of psychiatric distress among college students selected by group-SCAD included the average grade, educational level, being optimistic about future, having a boy/girlfriend, having an emotional breakup, the average daily number of cigarettes, substance abusing during previous month and having suicidal thoughts ever (P 
ISSN:1471-244X
1471-244X
DOI:10.1186/s12888-020-02591-3