Question

Suppose the researcher wants to use her sample to explore whether the suicide rate among her sample has increased when compared to published rates from 2010. What are some of the issues that the researcher faces in trying to explore this issue?

Answer 1

We identified 53 countries for which data on suicide in the WHO mortality database (the version released on 11 November 2012)16 were complete and valid for the period 2000-09 (fig 1⇓). To investigate the impact of the global economic crisis, we considered changes in suicide rates in 2009 mainly because it is the first complete year after the crisis began in summer 2008. Four countries (Bahrain, Egypt, Saint Vincent and Grenadines, and South Africa) were excluded because of probable substantial miscoding of suicides, indicated by the low rates of certified suicide and high ratios of undetermined death to suicide.17 18 The WHO database provides the most comprehensive standardised national mortality statistics for countries around the world.19 Complete suicide data in 2000-09 for the US (where the 2008 global economic crisis began) were unavailable in the database at the time of the study and were therefore extracted from the online database of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.20 These 54 study countries included 27 European countries, 18 American countries, eight Asian countries, and one African country. Figure 2⇓ shows a map of the study countries and their suicide rates in 2009. The 27 European countries included 78% of Europe’s population, and the 18 American countries accounted for 88% of the population in the Americas.21 In contrast, the Asian and African countries included in the study accounted for only 5% and 0.1% of the population in these two continents. Of the 54 study countries, data for 2010 were also available for 29 countries, including 20 European countries (46% of Europe’s population) and nine non-European countries (fig