2024년 비판과 대안을 위한 사회복지학회 춘계학술대회: 국민연금연구원 세션 (토론)

Abstract

This study was conducted to identify the predictive factors of generalized anxiety levels in adolescents using data from 51,850 middle and high school students from the 18th (2022) Korea Youth Risk Behavior Survey (KYRBS) of the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency. The data was analyzed by a decision tree model using SPSS 26.0. Our analysis revealed several findings. First, the group with the highest prevalence of general anxiety exhibited the following characteristics: high stress levels, experiences of sadness and despair, negative subjective health perception, inadequate fatigue recovery after sleep, and regular consumption of high- caffeine beverages. Stress emerged as the most significant predictor of anxiety. Third, the experience of sadness and despair was the second most significant variable affecting the prevalence of anxiety in both groups with below-average or high stress. Furthermore, self-rated ‘ill health’ was found to correlate with an increased prevalence of high-level generalized anxiety. This correlation was further analyzed according to subjective health perception and fatigue recovery after sleep, with or without the experience of sadness and despair. In addition, within the group with poor subjective health and insufficient recovery from fatigue after sleep, high- level anxiety was more prevalent among those consuming high-caffeine beverages more than once a week. General anxiety in adolescents can be predicted by a combination of health cognitive, psycho-emotional, and health behavior factors, including stress, experiences of sadness and despair, subjective health perceptions, fatigue recovery from after sleep, and consumption of high-caffeine beverages. Therefore, these five predictors identified by the decision tree model are crucial considerations for managing high-level general anxiety in adolescents.