Classification Of Drug Addicts Based On Decision Trees

Drug use is a worldwide problem,and scholars in many fields such as public health,criminology and psychology have discussed the problem.Drug abuse not only has a negative impact on the physical and mental function,living environment and social situation of drug addicts,but also has a negative impact on social public health and illegal and criminal situations.At present,there is no mature and effective prevention and treatment program.Especially nowadays,drugs are low in cost,easy to obtain and hard to distinguish.Once individuals involve in drug use,they are likely to change their trajectories of life.Among them,it is particularly noticeable that drug use is often accompanied by delinquency and crime,which will influence and intensify each other.When an individual both use drugs and commit crime,the harm to himself\herself and society are much greater than that when he\she only uses drugs or commits crime,so it is of great significance to identify whether these two acts are co-occurring and the type of co-occurrence.This study explores individual drug abuse and illegal and criminal behaviors from the perspective of life course.From this perspective,not only can the influencing factors of different aspects and stages be comprehensively included as far as possible,but also the relationship and mode of action of the influencing factors are taken into consideration,thus identifying the relative importance of different influencing factors.This provides new ideas for the prevention and treatment of drug abuse and crimes.The present study consists of two parts,including one study on the basis of interviews and qualitative analysis of possible classifications and underlying mechanisms of drug users.And a quantitative investigation which is conducted on the mechanism and relative importance of influencing factors of different subgroups of drug users.Specifically:(1)Study 1 compiled a set of interview drafts based on the existing literature,which consists of nine parts: the first part consists of demographic and socioeconomic status related issues;The second part mainly understands the participants’ early temperament,emotions,behavioral tendencies and conduct disorder related issues;The third and fourth parts deal with the family atmosphere,parents’ influence,brothers and sisters and other issues before the interviewees take drugs and commit crimes;The fifth part mainly inquires about the relationship between friends and classmates in childhood and adolescence;The sixth part focuses on understanding the educational experience of the participants;The seventh part is to understand the related contents of drug abuse,illegal and criminal behaviors of the interviewees;The eighth part further understands the drug abuse situation of the participants;The ninth part mainly talks about the early stress level and turning point events in an open way.After completing in-depth interviews,based on grounded theory and Nvivo software,qualitative analysis of the interview data was carried out to understand the occurrence and development process of drug abuse and other delinquent and criminal acts of drug users.The influencing factors and possible mechanisms of different subgroups of drug users(drug use only,drug use+ delinquency,drug use+ crime)are refined.(2)Study 2 adopted the decision tree method.Through quantitative research,the classification method and formation mechanism extracted from qualitative research were verified,and a decision tree model with high prediction accuracy was established.A total of 33 variables entered the decision tree.Individual deviation behavior is the most important prediction variable.The second most important variables are mother’s emotional warmth \ understanding,mother’s punishment \ severity,individual’s vulnerability to fear,father’s trust and communication with teachers.Although multiple variables have combined and shaped the different development paths of the three subgroups of drug users,there are obvious differences among the three subgroups.For drug users,individual academic input and performance,educational level and parents’ physical attacks had no significant predictive effect.For the drug use+ delinquency group,individual activation control,pleasure sensitivity,high intensity pleasure,parental alienation and peer communication had no significant predictive effect.For the drug+ crime group,mother’s punishment \ severity,father’s preference for subjects and parents’ verbal attacks had no significant predictive effect.In general,this study preliminarily explored the possibility of classifying drug users from the perspective of whether there was any delinquent or criminal behavior.Decision tree method was applied to the classification research of drug users.At the same time,multiple levels of independent variables were included,and a decision tree model with good prediction effect was established.This revealed the action mode and relative importance of different variables,and was helpful to understand the prediction path of three subgroups of drug users.