Application of Scan Statistics to Detect Suicide Clusters in Australia

Background

Suicide clustering occurs when multiple suicide incidents take place in a small area or/and within a short period of time. In spite of the multi-national research attention and particular efforts in preparing guidelines for tackling suicide clusters, the broader picture of epidemiology of suicide clustering remains unclear. This study aimed to develop techniques in using scan statistics to detect clusters, with the detection of suicide clusters in Australia as example.

Methods and Findings

Scan statistics was applied to detect clusters among suicides occurring between 2004 and 2008. Manipulation of parameter settings and change of area for scan statistics were performed to remedy shortcomings in existing methods. In total, 243 suicides out of 10,176 (2.4%) were identified as belonging to 15 suicide clusters. These clusters were mainly located in the Northern Territory, the northern part of Western Australia, and the northern part of Queensland. Among the 15 clusters, 4 (26.7%) were detected by both national and state cluster detections, 8 (53.3%) were only detected by the state cluster detection, and 3 (20%) were only detected by the national cluster detection.

Conclusions

These findings illustrate that the majority of spatial-temporal clusters of suicide were located in the inland northern areas, with socio-economic deprivation and higher proportions of indigenous people. Discrepancies between national and state/territory cluster detection by scan statistics were due to the contrast of the underlying suicide rates across states/territories. Performing both small-area and large-area analyses, and applying multiple parameter settings may yield the maximum benefits for exploring clusters.     

Ethnography of Africa: The Usefulness of the Useless

The complex epistemological and methodological problems of data-quality control or ethnographer bias in anthropological research as they relate to the use of the native languages and/or the use of native-interpreter informants are critically reexamined. Summarizing the 1939–1940 Mead-Lowie debate, the paper suggests, on the basis of a close review of selected classic ethnographies of Africa, various ways by which the quality of comparative cross-cultural data could be meaningfully improved . [methodology of cross-cultural research, epistemological issues in anthropology, use of native languages in fieldwork, ethnography of Africa, history of anthropology]     

The Ethnography of Contradiction: Studying Post-Unification Germany

Crumbling Walls and Tarnished Ideals: An Ethnography of East Germany before and after Unification. Hans Baer. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1998 155 pp.
Where the World Ended: Re-Unification and Identity in the German Borderland. Daphne Berdahl. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. 294 pp.     

The Trading Crowd: An Ethnography of the Shanghai Stock Market

The Trading Crowd: An Ethnography of the Shanghai Stock Market. Ellen Hertz. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. 238 pp.     

Building the Infrastructure, Modeling the Nation: The Case of Birth in Palestine

This article explores the intersection between the professional politics of medicine and national politics during the second Palestinian uprising, which erupted in 2000. Through an analysis of stories about childbirth from actors in the birth process--obstetricians, midwives and birth mothers--it examines two overlapping movements that contributed to building the public health infrastructure, the movement of sumud or steadfastness (1967-87) and the popular health movement (1978-94), as well as their contemporary afterlife. Finally, it deals with relations between medicine and governance through an analysis of the interpenetration of medical and political authority. The birth stories bring to light two contrasting visions of a nation in the context of restrictions on mobility and a ground chopped up by checkpoints. The quasi-postcolonial condition of Palestine as popular construct, institutional protostate organism, and the lived experience of its experts and of its gendered subjects underlie the ethnographic accounts.     

The Proverbial Bourdieu: Habitus and the Politics of Representation in the Ethnography of Kabylia

Since the 1970s, anthropologists have been centrally concerned with the relationship of ethnographic representation to political and historical context. Interestingly, the work of Pierre Bourdieu has largely escaped such contextualization, despite the significance of Bourdieu's ideas to anthropological theorizing. Today, many of Bourdieu's central concepts float free from the context out of which they arose—the Kabyle region of Algeria. This article addresses this omission by reading Bourdieu's early works against each other to reconstitute aspects of his methodology and fieldwork. Focusing on his choice to represent the Kabyles of his early work in prose, and those in his later work via proverbs, I suggest that key premises of Bourdieu's theory may not be supported by historical and ethnographic evidence. I consider how Bourdieu's position as a young social scientist grappling with ethnographic responsibilities in colonial wartime led him to privilege his interlocutors' accounts in some studies while expunging them from others. [Keywords: Bourdieu, represented speech, literacy, Algeria, Berbers]     

The Old Order Amish: Lessons From Kansas Ethnography

Abstract

Although they are widely known in the United States, the Old Order Amish present a puzzling face to both social science and popular media. This puzzle can be seen to arise from inaccurate notions of Amish life and an inadequate analytical paradigm for Amish ethnicity. ‘Both these features are especially evident in the case of the Amish of central Kansas; research in this area suggests that the fundamental sources of Amish distinctiveness are cultural rather than social and independent of technological backwardness of social isolation     

Film, Ethnography, and the Senses: The Corporeal Image

Film, Ethnography, and the Senses: The Corporeal Image . David MacDougall. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005. 274 pp.