Physio-Psychosocial Risks of Depression among College-Going Adolescents in Bangladesh: A Data Note

Study design

The study design was cross-sectional.

Study population

The study population was the college-going adolescents participated from all administrative divisions of Bangladesh.

Data collection duration

May to August, 2022

Participants’ selection criteria

The inclusion criteria of this study were: i) students who were studying at the college level (during the data collection period); ii) adolescents aged 13 to 19 years old; and (iii) who were Bangladeshi by birth. On the other hand, the exclusion criteria were: i) adolescents who were holding dual citizenship; ii) foreign adolescents currently studying in Bangladesh; and iii) adolescents who did not provide consent.

Data description

The dataset was deposited in Mendeley Data which supports the original research article published in the Journal of Affective Disorders Reports.¹⁵ Participants were the students who enrolled in college and were in grades eleven and twelve. A total of 1919 adolescents participated in the study, and this number was determined by using the statistical technique of determining the sample size for a cross-sectional prevalence study.

Study variables

The independent variables of the study included the socio-demographic characteristics of the college-going adolescents, their behavioral risks, and history of illness. The socio-demographic variables were age, sex, family economic condition, marital status, Grade point average (GPA), and religion. Respondents’ behaviors related variables included smoking habit, uses of social media, involvement in pre-marital relationship, pre-marital sex experience, regular physical exercises, practicing religion, family unrest, and experience in blackmail. The major history of illness related variables were physical illness, illness history in covid-19, and history of family mental illness. The details independent variables included in the study are presented in Table 1.

On the other hand, the dependent variable included the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) that was used to evaluate the participant's degree of depression symptoms to arrive at a result.¹⁵ The Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) is widely recognized as a very effective and user-friendly tool for identifying depression in individuals. The scale's validity has been verified in Bangladesh.¹⁶ The codes assigned to the PHQ-9 questions range from “0 = not at all” to “3 = virtually every day.” The degree of depression was categorized into five distinct levels based on the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) scores: none-minimal (score: 0 to 4), mild (score: 5 to 9), moderate (score: 10 to 14), moderately severe (score: 15 to 19), and severe (score: 20 to 27). Participants in this research who scored 10 or above were classified as having a positive diagnosis of depression.¹⁷

Data validation and quality control

Before commencing the survey, the questionnaire was translated into the Bengali language and subjected to validation via pre-testing. To determine the feasibility and effectiveness of the dataset, preliminary research (pre-testing) with 43 students was conducted. Subsequently, they were discarded throughout the further analysis of the data. The questionnaire underwent many iterations of revisions before the implementation of the final study, ensuring its compliance with all the specified criteria.

To ensure the accuracy of the data, we utilized various methods. These included thoroughly reviewing and verifying the completed questionnaires, employing SPSS 26.0 for examining the frequency of each variable to identify any unusual findings, and conducting reliability analysis (specifically Cronbach's alpha), which yielded a reliability coefficient value of 0.78 for the PHQ-9 questionnaire. Additionally, we employed various statistical techniques to guarantee the reliability and validity of the dataset's findings.

Limitations

One of the major drawbacks of the dataset is that it is based on a cross-sectional methodology, which means that it is not possible to demonstrate causal relationships and the consequences of such interactions. Those people who were included in this dataset were responsible for providing their pertinent information, which was gathered by self-reporting. Considering this, there is a potential that the persons involved may make errors or fail to provide accurate information. A further restriction of the dataset is that this is the case. In addition, this dataset did not include any confounding factors that might potentially affect the prevalence of depression among the persons who participated in the study.

Ethics consideration

The study was conducted following the guidelines set out in the Declaration of Helsinki (2000) and was ethically approved from the Department of Biostatistics, National Institute of Preventive and Social Medicine (NIPSOM), Mohakhali, Dhaka-1212, Bangladesh with registration number: NIP/BIOS/2022/000/01, dated March 12, 2022. Written consent was taken from each participant before initiating the Google-based data collection. The participants who agreed with the consent were included further to join the interview.

CRediT author statement

Md Abu Bakkar Siddik: Writing – review & editing, Writing – original draft, Visualization, Validation, Methodology, Investigation, Formal analysis, Data curation, Conceptualization. Nafiul Hasan: Writing – review & editing, Visualization, Formal analysis. Al Mahmud: Writing – review & editing, Writing – original draft, Investigation, Data curation. Akher Ali: Writing – review & editing, Investigation, Data curation. Md. Khalid Syfullah: Writing – review & editing, Writing – original draft, Investigation, Data curation. Md. Zamilur Rahman: Writing – review & editing, Writing – original draft. Anton Abdulbasah Kamil: Writing – review & editing, Writing – original draft, Funding acquisition. Mohammad Meshbahur Rahman: Writing – review & editing, Writing – original draft, Visualization, Validation, Supervision, Software, Resources, Project administration, Methodology, Investigation, Funding acquisition, Formal analysis, Data curation, Conceptualization.