Microblog discourse analysis for parenting style assessment

IntroductionParents' negative parenting style is an important cause of anxiety, depression, and suicide among university students. Given the widespread use of social media, microblogs offer a new and promising way for non-invasive, large-scale assessment of parenting styles of students' pa...

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Main Authors: Zihan Wei, Lei Cao, Zhihong Qiao, Fang Luo, Xin Wang, Junrui Tian, Qi Li
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Frontiers Media S.A. 2025-02-01
Series:Frontiers in Public Health
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Online Access:https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2025.1505825/full
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author Zihan Wei
Lei Cao
Zhihong Qiao
Fang Luo
Xin Wang
Junrui Tian
Qi Li
author_facet Zihan Wei
Lei Cao
Zhihong Qiao
Fang Luo
Xin Wang
Junrui Tian
Qi Li
author_sort Zihan Wei
collection DOAJ
description IntroductionParents' negative parenting style is an important cause of anxiety, depression, and suicide among university students. Given the widespread use of social media, microblogs offer a new and promising way for non-invasive, large-scale assessment of parenting styles of students' parents.MethodsIn this study, we have two main objectives: (1) investigating the correlation between students' microblog discourses and parents' parenting styles and (2) devising a method to predict students' parenting styles from their microblog discourses. We analyzed 111,258 posts from 575 university students using frequency analysis to examine differences in the usage of topical and emotional word across different parenting styles. Informed by these insights, we developed an effective parenting style assessment method, including a correlation injection module.ResultsExperimental results on the 575 students show that our method outperforms all the baseline NLP methods (including ChatGPT-4), achieving good assessment performance by reducing MSE by 14% to 0.12.DiscussionOur study provides a pioneering microblog-based parenting style assessment tool and constructs a dataset, merging insights from psychology and computational science. On the one hand, our study advances the understanding of how parenting styles are reflected in the linguistic and emotional expressions of students on microblogs. On the other hand, our study provides an assisting tool that could be used by healthcare institutions to identify students' parenting styles. It facilitates the identification of suicide risk factors among microblog student users, and enables timely interventions to prevent suicides, which enhances human wellbeing and saves lives.
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spelling doaj-art-123c86e6054a474d99abd367aced068a2025-02-11T05:10:19ZengFrontiers Media S.A.Frontiers in Public Health2296-25652025-02-011310.3389/fpubh.2025.15058251505825Microblog discourse analysis for parenting style assessmentZihan Wei0Lei Cao1Zhihong Qiao2Fang Luo3Xin Wang4Junrui Tian5Qi Li6School of Economics and Management, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing, ChinaFaculty of Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, ChinaFaculty of Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, ChinaFaculty of Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, ChinaDepartment of Engineering Science, University of Oxford, Oxford, United KingdomDepartment of Computer Science and Technology, Tsinghua University, Beijing, ChinaFaculty of Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, ChinaIntroductionParents' negative parenting style is an important cause of anxiety, depression, and suicide among university students. Given the widespread use of social media, microblogs offer a new and promising way for non-invasive, large-scale assessment of parenting styles of students' parents.MethodsIn this study, we have two main objectives: (1) investigating the correlation between students' microblog discourses and parents' parenting styles and (2) devising a method to predict students' parenting styles from their microblog discourses. We analyzed 111,258 posts from 575 university students using frequency analysis to examine differences in the usage of topical and emotional word across different parenting styles. Informed by these insights, we developed an effective parenting style assessment method, including a correlation injection module.ResultsExperimental results on the 575 students show that our method outperforms all the baseline NLP methods (including ChatGPT-4), achieving good assessment performance by reducing MSE by 14% to 0.12.DiscussionOur study provides a pioneering microblog-based parenting style assessment tool and constructs a dataset, merging insights from psychology and computational science. On the one hand, our study advances the understanding of how parenting styles are reflected in the linguistic and emotional expressions of students on microblogs. On the other hand, our study provides an assisting tool that could be used by healthcare institutions to identify students' parenting styles. It facilitates the identification of suicide risk factors among microblog student users, and enables timely interventions to prevent suicides, which enhances human wellbeing and saves lives.https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2025.1505825/fullparenting stylemicroblog discoursedeep learningparenting style datasetsocial media
spellingShingle Zihan Wei
Lei Cao
Zhihong Qiao
Fang Luo
Xin Wang
Junrui Tian
Qi Li
Microblog discourse analysis for parenting style assessment
Frontiers in Public Health
parenting style
microblog discourse
deep learning
parenting style dataset
social media
title Microblog discourse analysis for parenting style assessment
title_full Microblog discourse analysis for parenting style assessment
title_fullStr Microblog discourse analysis for parenting style assessment
title_full_unstemmed Microblog discourse analysis for parenting style assessment
title_short Microblog discourse analysis for parenting style assessment
title_sort microblog discourse analysis for parenting style assessment
topic parenting style
microblog discourse
deep learning
parenting style dataset
social media
url https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2025.1505825/full
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AT leicao microblogdiscourseanalysisforparentingstyleassessment
AT zhihongqiao microblogdiscourseanalysisforparentingstyleassessment
AT fangluo microblogdiscourseanalysisforparentingstyleassessment
AT xinwang microblogdiscourseanalysisforparentingstyleassessment
AT junruitian microblogdiscourseanalysisforparentingstyleassessment
AT qili microblogdiscourseanalysisforparentingstyleassessment