Classification and Prediction of Suicidal Tendencies of the Youth in the Philippines: An Empirical Study

This paper investigates suicidal tendencies of youth in the Philippines based on the Young Adult Fertility and Sexuality Study (YAFS) 2002. The main goal of the paper is the classification and prediction of suicidal tendencies using classification algorithms. The different classification algorithms such as Classification and Regression Trees, random forests and conditional inference trees; and the logistic regression have consistent findings on the significant variables affecting suicidal tendencies. Due to the severely unbalanced classes of the response variable, the classification models have very poor predictive ability for the minority class although the overall classification rate is high. A classification algorithm is proposed which improves the predictive ability in terms of balancing out the correct classification in the two classes of the response variable.