Psychological Well-Being of Left-Behind Children in China: Text Mining of the Social Media Website Zhihu
Abstract
:1. Introduction
2. Methods
2.1. Data Source
2.2. Data Collection
2.3. Data Analysis
2.3.1. Linguistic Analysis
- Propose the research hypothesis.
- b.
- Calculate the statistics.
- c.
- Determine whether statistically significant differences exist between the study group and the control group.
2.3.2. Textual Analysis
3. Results
3.1. The Linguistic Analysis of LBC
3.2. The Textual Analysis of LBC
4. Discussion
4.1. Risk of Depression and Suicide
4.2. Child Neglect as a Source of Depression and Suicidal Thoughts among the LBC in this Study
4.3. Online Suicide Prevention and Positive Intervention for LBC
5. Conclusions
Author Contributions
Funding
Institutional Review Board Statement
Informed Consent Statement
Data Availability Statement
Conflicts of Interest
Appendix A
Total Function | Pronouns | Other Function | Other Grammar | Affect | Social | Cognitive Processes | Perceptual Processes | Relativity | Personal Concerns | Informal Language |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
I | Articles | Verbs | Positive | Family | Insight | See | Motion | Work | Swear | |
We | Prepositions | Adjectives | Negative | Friend | Causation | Hear | Space | Leisure | Net speak | |
You | Auxiliary verbs | Comparisons | Anxiety | Female | Discrepancy | Feel | Time | Home | Agreement | |
She and he | Adverbs | Interrogatives | Anger | Male | Tentative | Money | Non-fluencies | |||
They | Conjunctions | Numbers | Sadness | Certainty | Religion | Filler | ||||
Impersonal | Negations | Quantifiers | Difference | Death |
Questions of Control Group | Number of Answer |
---|---|
How do you spend your day? | 297 |
What’s your daily routine like? | 66 |
Total | 363 |
Total number of words | 209,119 |
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Questions about LBC on Zhihu |
---|
Q_1 What is the status of left-behind children when they grow up? |
Q_2 What is the experience of left-behind children? |
Q_3 What kind of psychological problems do left-behind children have when they grow up? |
Question | Questioner ID | Questioner’s Occupation | Time | Degree of Attention | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Question Followers | Number of Views | ||||
Q_1 | ID1 | Art worker | 25 July 2014 | 3936 | 1,403,306 |
Q_2 | ID2 | Parenting teacher | 3 November 2015 | 1627 | 712,961 |
Q_3 | Anonymous | Unknown | 10 May 2014 | 551 | 334,302 |
Question | Number of Responses | Time Frame of Posted Answers | Gender of Responder | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Male | Female | Unknown | |||
Q_1 | 776 | July 2014~December 2019 | 542 | 144 | 80 |
Q_2 | 561 | November 2015~December 2019 | 345 | 137 | 79 |
Q_3 | 138 | May 2015~January 2020 | 90 | 24 | 24 |
Lexical for Searching LBC’s Text | |
---|---|
Negative words | Get out, nightmares, quarrel, bullying, sexual assault, self-abasement, depression. |
Death-related words | Suicide, taking drugs, die, despair, cut wrist. |
Four Types of Vocabulary | LBC | Control Group | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
Counts | Proportion of Total Words | Counts | Proportion of Total Words | |
First-person singular pronoun | 39,723 | 3.92% | 1530 | 0.73% |
Negative words | 46,655 | 4.60% | 3212 | 1.54% |
Past tense verbs | 12,351 | 1.22% | 959 | 0.46% |
Death-related words | 3049 | 0.30% | 311 | 0.15% |
Total | 101,778 | 10.40% | 6012 | 2.88% |
First-Person Singular Pronouns | Negative Words | Past Tense Verbs | Death-Related Words | |
---|---|---|---|---|
t | −20.0929 | −15.8535 | −14.0989 | −9.65936 |
p-Value | 2.76 × 10−81 | 5.90 × 10−52 | 2.19 × 10−42 | 3.36 × 10−21 |
LBC_1: Every time I call [my parents], their first sentence will always be: “What happened?” I said nothing. “I just wanted to talk to you.” The rest of the conversation would be, they would answer whatever I asked, and then there would be no follow-up. Now when I call them, it’s mostly because I went out of money. It’s not often, once a month. It’s like having a period, which sometimes it’s early but sometimes late. |
LBC_2: What I heard most since I was a child is, “Your parents work hard for you to make money, so you have to be obedient and don’t disappoint your parents.” “Your parents don’t want you anymore, so you need to live in someone else’s house.” “Get out of here, who wants your parents’ rotten money?” “Your parents have done a lot of evil in their previous life to have a child like you, just like a debt collector.” “If you hadn’t been born, your brother would have been the only child. How happy your parents would be.” … It’s really like a nightmare. |
LBC_3: Although my parents sent letters and made phone calls from time to time, they never sent me a penny. All I remember is that my grandmother had a bad temper and used to quarrel and fight with my grandfather. Every day I took a lunch box and rice to the school dining room with steamed rice, and then I took some pickles and ate them. Occasionally, my grandmother gave me a dime to buy food at school (I vaguely remember the food provided by the school is 1-3 dimes). The child does not understand the hardships of life at all (my grandmother recalled that I hadn’t eaten any sugar for three years). Then such days continued until nearly 6th grade. |
LBC_4: When I was bullied at school, other children had parents supporting them, but I didn’t, so I could only endure sexual abuse. I had nowhere to ask for help when I was sexually assaulted (let me be anonymous). I am good at studying. My relatives like me and my teachers also like me, but I am still an introverted and self-abasement person. |
LBC_5: There are still many drawbacks since I was little without my parents around me. For example, I haven’t developed good study habits since I was young. There was very little homework in the countryside, so I could get first place casually in primary school. I have never studied seriously, and my grades were very unstable when I went to school in the city. Before I went to school in the city, I never knew that I needed to take notes in class, because no one took notes in my countryside school, and the teachers would not tell you to do so as well. I never studied English in the rural elementary school for six years (there are English classes, but you know that). |
LBC_6: When I first entered college, I felt low self-esteem so that I shed tears in the middle of the night. I like to put pressure on myself, hoping to make myself better. I don’t care about people in relationships and don’t know how to socialize with opposite-gender friends. Apart from genetic inheritance, the main reason for that is the experience of left-behind children. No matter what I can achieve in the future, I will not be happy inside. |
LBC_7: Now I am inferior, sensitive, and insecure. I feel that my parents are terribly unfamiliar, and sometimes I feel embarrassed to stay with them. I hated them, why they gave birth to us but don’t care about us. |
LBC_8: As a senior left-behind child, I lack of love, insecure, strong defensive heart, not talkative, and love to be alone. |
LBC_9: I had severe depression five years ago. At that time, I had auditory hallucinations and committed suicide twice, and I am still taking medication. I was rescued by my parents. The first time I used a pair of tweezers in the toilet to stab my chest, and the second time I used underwear to strangle my neck in the hospital. Later, my mother called 120 (emergency) for me. I don’t know if everyone who wants to die has such despair as me. It just feels that in this world, there is really no love and no meaning in life. LBC_10: Hehe. I hate being with them, hate their words, hate their selfishness, hate their ignorance. At some point, I wish I had died suddenly. |
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Share and Cite
Lyu, Y.; Chow, J.C.-C.; Hwang, J.-J.; Li, Z.; Ren, C.; Xie, J. Psychological Well-Being of Left-Behind Children in China: Text Mining of the Social Media Website Zhihu. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2022, 19, 2127. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19042127
Lyu Y, Chow JC-C, Hwang J-J, Li Z, Ren C, Xie J. Psychological Well-Being of Left-Behind Children in China: Text Mining of the Social Media Website Zhihu. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. 2022; 19(4):2127. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19042127
Chicago/Turabian StyleLyu, Yuwen, Julian Chun-Chung Chow, Ji-Jen Hwang, Zhi Li, Cheng Ren, and Jungui Xie. 2022. "Psychological Well-Being of Left-Behind Children in China: Text Mining of the Social Media Website Zhihu" International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 19, no. 4: 2127. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19042127