Family factors to predict adolescents’ emotional health by decision tree model: A comparison between normally developed group and chronic-condition group

Abstract

The increasing trend of adolescents’ emotional symptoms has become a global public health problem. Especially, adolescents with chronic diseases or disabilities face more risks of emotional problems. Ample evidence showed family environment associates with adolescents’ emotional health. However, the categories of family-related factors that most strongly influence adolescents’ emotional health remained unclear. Additionally, it was not known that whether family environment influences emotional health differently between normally developed adolescents and those with chronic condition(s). Health Behaviours in School-aged Children (HBSC) database provides mass data about adolescents’ self-reported health and social environmental backgrounds, which offers opportunities to apply data-driven approaches to determine critical family environmental factors that influence adolescents’ health. Thus, based on the national HBSC data in the Czech Republic collected from 2017 to 2018, the current study adopted a data-driven method, classification-regression-decision-tree analysis, to investigate the impacts of family environmental factors, including demographic factors and psycho-social factors on adolescents’ emotional health. The results suggested that family psycho-social functions played a significant role in maintaining adolescents’ emotional health. Both normally developed adolescents and chronic-condition(s) adolescents benefited from communication with parents, family support, and parental monitoring. Besides, for adolescents with chronic condition(s), school-related parental support was also meaningful for decreasing emotional problems. In conclusion, the findings suggest the necessity of interventions to strengthen family-school communication and cooperation to improve chronic-disease adolescents’ mental health. The interventions aiming to improve parent-adolescent communication, parental monitoring, and family support are essential for all adolescents.