Tracing a Statistic: Teen Suicide
By Kevin
Two-thirds the way down on page 15 of Alexandra Robbins' The Overachievers, I come across this statistic:[Overachiever culture] has diminished leisure time for all ages. It is believed to be a major factor in the 114 percent spike in suicide rates among fifteen-to-nineteen-year-olds between 1980 and 2002.
I'm not an expert on these types of important social issues, but that number didn't look quite right to me, so I flipped to the endnotes, and found:
15.114 percent spike: The important article by Stepp, Laura Sessions. "Perfect Problems/" Washington Post, May 5, 2002.Unfortunately, that article is not online (for free), but using my local library's electronic database, I found it:
"I've seen a dramatic change in the stress level of these kids," says Carolyn Callahan, who has worked with high achievers for 30 years, currently at the National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented at the University of Virginia. "They're going through the motions and not enjoying what they're doing." The perfection machine, what she calls a treadmill, "has created a situation where they don't feel they have a choice to get off."We're getting warmer. A simple Google search revealed the report in the newsletter. It starts off like this:One report in a newsletter by Callahan's center worries that the characteristics of these students, including "perfectionism" and "supersensitivity," put them at risk for suicide, and notes that the proportion of young people ages 15 to 19 who have taken their own lives has jumped 114 percent since 1980.
The rate of suicide among children 10 to 14 years of age increased 100% between 1980-1996. Among youngsters 15-19 years of age, the rate of increase was 114%, making suicide the fourth leading cause of death for this age group (U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, 1999).So it is not true that the suicide rate for 15-19 year olds increased by 114% from 1980 to 2002 -- 2002 being when the WaPo article was written --, but from 1980 to 1996.
But I had to keep going. Is that just as depressing statistic even true? We're still not sure how this data was created and validated. According to the footnote, the HHS report is actually the Surgeon General's Call to Action to Prevent Suicide 1999. Another Google search reveals the SG report, in which we find.:
From 1980 to 1996, the rate of suicide among persons aged 15-19 years increased by 14% and among persons aged 10-14 years by 100%Umm.... It's 14%, not 114% percent!?! Let's go to the source of those statistics! I would, but those aren't sourced at all in the SG document!
Fortunately, hard data do exist, but I found it difficult to source the original CDC table ("Death rates for 72 selected
causes by 5-year age groups, race, and sex: United States, 1979–1997. Worktable GMWK 291 Trend B"). These folks do cite the data, and do me one better by graphing it:
We're interested in the white squares. So the real growth in the 15 to 19 year old suicide rate is 14%, not 114%. The red line shows where a constant suicide rate would have ended up in 1996. The blue line shows where the alleged 114% increase would have left us in 1996.
What an utter refusal to check sources and validate simple statistics! THIS IS NOT MY JOB, nor the job of any of Ms. Robbins' readers. It's the job of the author and editors. I don't know if I should even bother continuing to read the book at all, as I've spent 1/2 hour tracking down just one horrendously wrong data point. How many more will be this wrong???
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I'm not saying teen suicide isn't a problem, or that we should pretend that overachievers don't have problems. I am saying that understanding the actual scope of the problem is vital in arranging our political priorities. And for that we need solid data, not this crappy series of citations of tertiary sources.
Moral: Next time you hear a politician say we need a "national discussion" on an issue, realize that the type of "facts" they want to talk about are frequently no better sourced than the example cited here.
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