That’s a good idea, as it will give us even more insight into which regions we should target more in order to increase impact. The regional data also exists on the Japan Police Agency website, so this should be feasible. Thanks!
As for the schools news about a suicide—it’s hard to coordinate to receive this news for mostly human-related reasons (most point of contacts usually only contact my nonprofit if they need a workshop, they never give us any feedback).
I am pessimistic about using data about suicides at the outreached schools to estimate the effect of the school awareness packages. For Yulia’s estimate that this program reached 10,875 students (which I believe is too high), and suicide rate of 7.26*10^-5 suicides per student-year, one should expect 0.790 suicides per year (= 10.875*10^3*7.26*10^-5) in the outreached schools. For Yulia’s guess that the program decreases suicides by 25 %, one should expect 0.592 suicides per year (= 0.790*(1 − 0.25)). I think it is going to be quite hard to distinguish between uncertain distributions whose means are 0.790 and 0.592 suicides per year. I suspect one may easily have to wait 10 years to know about whether there is an effect of 25 %.
To get more data quicker, I would track not only the number of suicides, but also outcomes that are known to predict suicides. For example, there may be many suicide attempts per suicide, and I guess the number of suicides is roughly proportional to the number of suicide attempts. One could also try to track attitudes towards suicide, some of which may be a good predictor of suicides, for instance, planning a suicide. At the most distant level from tracking the number of suicides, one could simply ask the students in the outreached schools to which extent they have engaged with the awareness packages.
That’s a good idea, as it will give us even more insight into which regions we should target more in order to increase impact. The regional data also exists on the Japan Police Agency website, so this should be feasible. Thanks!
As for the schools news about a suicide—it’s hard to coordinate to receive this news for mostly human-related reasons (most point of contacts usually only contact my nonprofit if they need a workshop, they never give us any feedback).
Hi Cat and Yulia.
I am pessimistic about using data about suicides at the outreached schools to estimate the effect of the school awareness packages. For Yulia’s estimate that this program reached 10,875 students (which I believe is too high), and suicide rate of 7.26*10^-5 suicides per student-year, one should expect 0.790 suicides per year (= 10.875*10^3*7.26*10^-5) in the outreached schools. For Yulia’s guess that the program decreases suicides by 25 %, one should expect 0.592 suicides per year (= 0.790*(1 − 0.25)). I think it is going to be quite hard to distinguish between uncertain distributions whose means are 0.790 and 0.592 suicides per year. I suspect one may easily have to wait 10 years to know about whether there is an effect of 25 %.
To get more data quicker, I would track not only the number of suicides, but also outcomes that are known to predict suicides. For example, there may be many suicide attempts per suicide, and I guess the number of suicides is roughly proportional to the number of suicide attempts. One could also try to track attitudes towards suicide, some of which may be a good predictor of suicides, for instance, planning a suicide. At the most distant level from tracking the number of suicides, one could simply ask the students in the outreached schools to which extent they have engaged with the awareness packages.