This is a repository comprised of my group and individual projects for DIGHUM101 in Summer 2020, taught by Professor Evan Muzzall.
Working alongside Latosha Sanchez and Michelle Li, our group presentation explored the benefits & limitations of the recently developed distant reading and comparing it to the traditional practice of close reading. Our group discovered that distant reading, although powerful with its comprehensive algorithms (such as Latent Dirichlet Allocation, or LDA) and speedy computer processes, falls short when exploring fictional texts or works with figurative, rhetorical, or ambiguous language. Its fallbacks can, however, be redeemed when applying close reading skills and techniques. At the same time, distant reading opens a path and a new set of handy libraries that scholars can utilize when exploring vast amounts of data/texts that cannot be covered in one sitting of close reading.
Although the quarantine enforced virtual classes and overall made meetings less interactive, our group was able to be well-organized, collaborative, and hard working. Setting specific due dates and evenly dividing up the work amongst peers, it made working in a group easy yet productive and effective in getting things done. I can say without a doubt that I really enjoyed working in this group and would look forward to working in a similar (if not the same) environment.
Our group project's topic paper and presentation slides can be found under "Files".
For my individual project, I researched the trend of mental health usage amongst children from 2000 to 2018. My question was "How has mental health care usage by children change over time? What factors have had an effect in one's child's ability to reach out (or not reach out) for therapy?"
I conducted this project by pulling public data from the National Health Interview Survey from the CDC website. Focusing on one survey question to gauge the amount of usage/visits for mental care/counseling amongst children ("CHCSYR1: During the past 12 months, has your child seen or talked to a mental health professional?"), I looked at different factors that seemed correlated to one's response to said question (such as sex, race, age, affordability, and general use of health care).
Results show the growing prevalence of mental health over time as more children were reaching out for mental care/counseling. Other interesting observations can be made about different factors, however no solid conclusions were developed due to need for more data and further research.
All in all, mental health is and will become prevalent. If need be, it's extremely beneficial to start receiving care at earlier stages in life, and the best way to reach out for help is to receive outreach from an outside source or even within close encounters.
The Jupyter Notebook for this individual project can be found under "Notebooks" as "Mental Health Care Usage for Children".