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dc.contributor.authorBarros, Joana M
dc.contributor.authorMelia, Ruth
dc.contributor.authorFrancis, Kady
dc.contributor.authorBogue, John
dc.contributor.authorO'Sullivan, Mary
dc.contributor.authorYoung, Karen
dc.contributor.authorBernert, Rebecca A
dc.contributor.authorRebholz-Schuhmann, Dietrich
dc.contributor.authorDuggan, Jim
dc.date.accessioned2019-10-04T14:40:17Z
dc.date.available2019-10-04T14:40:17Z
dc.date.issued2019-09-02
dc.identifier.issn1660-4601
dc.identifier.pmid31480718
dc.identifier.doi10.3390/ijerph16173201
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10147/626854
dc.descriptionAnnual suicide figures are critical in identifying trends and guiding research, yet challenges arising from significant lags in reporting can delay and complicate real-time interventions. In this paper, we utilized Google Trends search volumes for behavioral forecasting of national suicide rates in Ireland between 2004 and 2015. Official suicide rates are recorded by the Central Statistics Office in Ireland. While similar investigations using Google trends data have been carried out in other jurisdictions (e.g., United Kingdom, United Stated of America), such research had not yet been completed in Ireland. We compiled a collection of suicide- and depression-related search terms suggested by Google Trends and manually sourced from the literature. Monthly search rate terms at different lags were compared with suicide occurrences to determine the degree of correlation. Following two approaches based on vector autoregression and neural network autoregression, we achieved mean absolute error values between 4.14 and 9.61 when incorporating search query data, with the highest performance for the neural network approach. The application of this process to United Kingdom suicide and search query data showed similar results, supporting the benefit of Google Trends, neural network approach, and the applied search terms to forecast suicide risk increase. Overall, the combination of societal data and online behavior provide a good indication of societal risks; building on past research, our improvements led to robust models integrating search query and unemployment data for suicide risk forecasting in Ireland.en_US
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.subjectIrelanden_US
dc.subjectautoregressionen_US
dc.subjectforecastingen_US
dc.subjectneural networksen_US
dc.subjectSUICIDEen_US
dc.titleThe Validity of Google Trends Search Volumes for Behavioral Forecasting of National Suicide Rates in Ireland.en_US
dc.typeArticleen_US
dc.source.journaltitleInternational journal of environmental research and public health
refterms.dateFOA2019-10-04T14:40:17Z


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