Abstract
Statistical machine learning methods can provide help when developing preventative services and tools that support the empowerment of individuals. We explore how the self-organizing map could be utilized as a tool for analyzing, visualizing and browsing heterogeneous survey data on wellbeing that contains both quantitative (numeric) and qualitative (text) data. There is systematic evidence implying that social isolation has drastic consequences for subjective well-being and health. It is important to obtain a deeper understanding of the phenomenon. Analysis of loneliness questionnaire data (N=521) succeeds in identifying profiles of loneliness as well as identifies crowd-sourced ideas for improving social wellbeing among the different subgroups.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Castellani, B., Hafferty, F.: Sociology and Complexity Science: A New Field of Inquiry. Springer (2009)
Kohonen, T.: Self-organizing maps. Springer (2001)
Venna, J., Kaski, S.: Local multidimensional scaling. Neural Networks 19(6), 889–899 (2006)
Nikkilä, J., Törönen, P., Kaski, S., Venna, J., Castrén, E., Wong, G.: Analysis and visualization of gene expression data using self-organizing maps. Neural networks 15(8), 953–966 (2002)
Castellani, B., Castellani, J., Spray, S.L.: Grounded neural networking: Modeling complex quantitative data. Symbolic Interaction 26(4), 577–589 (2003)
Janasik, N., Honkela, T., Bruun, H.: Text mining in qualitative research: Application of an unsupervised learning method. Organizational Research Methods 12(3), 436–460 (2009)
Honkela, T., Koskinen, I., Koskenniemi, T., Karvonen, S.: Kohonen’s Self-Organizing Map in Contextual Analysis of Data. In: Information Organization and Databases: Foundations of Data Organization, pp. 135–148. Kluwer (2000)
Lagus, K., Vatanen, T., Kettunen, O., Heikkilä, A., Heikkilä, M., Pantzar, M., Honkela, T.: Paths of wellbeing on self-organizing maps. In: Proc. of WSOM 2012, pp. 345–352 (2012)
Vatanen, T., Heikkilä, M., Honkela, T., Kettunen, O., Lagus, K., Pantzar, M.: Kuntotiedot kartalle - erilaiset hyvä- ja huonokuntoisten ryhmät näkyviin. Liikunta & Tiede (Sports & Science), 48–53 (2012)
Heikkilä, A.: Information visualisation in a peer support application. Master’s thesis, Aalto University, Department of Information and Computer Science, Espoo, Finland (2012)
Honkela, T., Izzatdust, Z., Lagus, K.: Text mining for wellbeing: Selecting stories using semantic and pragmatic features. In: Villa, A.E.P., Duch, W., Érdi, P., Masulli, F., Palm, G. (eds.) ICANN 2012, Part II. LNCS, vol. 7553, pp. 467–474. Springer, Heidelberg (2012)
Fokkema, T., De Jong Gierveld, J., Dykstra, P.A.: Cross-national differences in older adult loneliness. The Journal of psychology 146(1-2), 201–228 (2012)
Hagerty, B.M., Williams, A.: The effects of sense of belonging, social support, conflict, and loneliness on depression. Nursing Research 48(4), 215–219 (1999)
Saari, J.: Yksinäisten yhteiskunta (The society of the lonely). WSOY (2009)
Sharabi, A., Levi, U., Margalit, M.: Children’s loneliness, sense of coherence, family climate and hope: Developmental risk and protective factors. The Journal of Psychology 146(1-2), 61–83 (2012)
Vanhalst, J., Luyckx, K., Raes, F., Goossens, L.: Loneliness and depressive symptoms: The mediating and moderating role of uncontrollable ruminative thoughts. The Journal of psychology 146(1-2), 259–276 (2012)
Segrin, C., Nevarez, N., Arroyo, A., Harwood, J.: Family of origin environment and adolescent bullying predict young adult loneliness. The Journal of Psychology 146(1-2), 119–134 (2012)
Seligman, M.E.: Positive psychology, positive prevention, and positive therapy. Handbook of Positive Psychology 2, 3–12 (2002)
Pearson, P.T., Cooper, C.I.: Using self organizing maps to analyze demographics and swing state voting in the 2008 U.S. Presidential election. In: Mana, N., Schwenker, F., Trentin, E. (eds.) ANNPR 2012. LNCS, vol. 7477, pp. 201–212. Springer, Heidelberg (2012)
Pyysiäinen, I., Lindeman, M., Honkela, T.: Counterintuitiveness as the hallmark of religiosity. Religion 33(4), 341–355 (2003)
Kaski, S., Honkela, T., Lagus, K., Kohonen, T.: WEBSOM—self-organizing maps of document collections. Neurocomputing 21, 101–117 (1998)
Lagus, K., Airola, A., Creutz, M.: Data analysis of conceptual similarities of Finnish verbs. In: Proceedings of CogSci 2002, pp. 566–571 (2002)
Cottrell, M., Ibbou, S., Letremy, P.: Som-based algorithms for qualitative variables. Neural Networks 17(8-9), 1149–1167 (2004)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Lagus, K., Saari, J., Nieminen, I.T., Honkela, T. (2013). Exploration of Loneliness Questionnaires Using the Self-Organising Map. In: Mladenov, V., Koprinkova-Hristova, P., Palm, G., Villa, A.E.P., Appollini, B., Kasabov, N. (eds) Artificial Neural Networks and Machine Learning – ICANN 2013. ICANN 2013. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 8131. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-40728-4_51
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-40728-4_51
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-40727-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-40728-4
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)