JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Understanding the factors contributing to mental wellbeing in youth is a public health priority. Self-reported enthusiasm for the future may be a useful indicator of wellbeing and has been shown to forecast social and educational success. Typically, cross-domain measures of ecological and health-related factors with relevance to public policy and programming are analyzed either in isolation or in targeted models assessing bivariate interactions. Here, we capitalize on a large provincial dataset and machine learning to identify the sociodemographic, experiential, behavioral, and other health-related factors most strongly associated with levels of subjective enthusiasm for the future in a large sample of elementary and secondary school students.

Objective:

Identify the sociodemographic, experiential, behavioural, and other health-related factors associated with enthusiasm for the future, in elementary and secondary school students using machine learning.

Methods:

We analyzed data from 13,661 participants in the 2019 Ontario Student Drug Use and Health Survey (OSDUHS) (grades 7 to 12) with complete data for our primary outcome: self-reported levels of enthusiasm for the future. We used 50 variables including demographics, perception of school experience (including school connectedness and academic performance), physical activity and quantity of sleep, substance use, and physical and mental health indicators as model predictors. Models were built using a non-linear decision-tree based machine learning algorithm, called eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost), to classify students as indicating either high or low levels of enthusiasm. SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP) values were used to interpret the generated models, providing a ranking of feature importance and revealing any non-linear or interactive effects of input variables.

Results:

The top three contributors to higher self-rated enthusiasm for the future included: higher self-rated physical health (SHAP=0.62), feeling that one is able to discuss problems or feelings with their parents (0.49), and school belonging (0.32). Additionally, subjective social status at school was a top feature and showed nonlinear effects, with benefits to predicted enthusiasm present in the mid-high range of values (from 0-10).

Conclusions:

Using machine leaning, we identified key factors related to self-reported enthusiasm for the future in a large sample of young students: perceived physical health, subjective school social status and connectedness, and quality of relationship with parents. A focus on perceptions of physical health and school connectedness should be considered central to improving the wellbeing of youth at the population level.