Data Ciphers

Health is the wealth of data. Join us at Data Ciphers as we explore the rich tapestry of well-being through the lens of analytics.

Hi! 😄 Welcome to our project webpage.

Stay healthy and stay tuned to follow our journey through the vast world of data.

Team Members

Mert Bekir Kaplan Doğa Oral Arda Türkan Ayşenur Eren Ceren Arslan

Project Topic

Türkiye Health Survey, 2022

The Türkiye Health Survey aims to uncover people’s overall health and gather information about key health indicators that are important for understanding a country’s development. This study is designed to facilitate international comparisons and provide insights into national health needs. (TurkStat, 2023)1

In this study, we are focused on analyzing the distribution of main diseases/health problems, status of alcohol use and body mass indexes among individuals by sex.

Data Set

Percentage of Health Problems in the Last 12 Months by Sex 2016-2022

Percentage of Status of Alcohol Use by Sex and Age Group 2016-2022

Body Mass Index Distribution of Individuals by Sex 2008-2022

Key Takeaways

  • For our analysis, we have selected the Turkey Health Survey topic from the Turkey Statistical Institute. This survey is a research project with the aim of understanding the general state of health and the collection of data on key health indicators in order to be able to measure the development of the country. The Survey provides international comparisons and helps to identify national health needs.

  • Our data set contains a wide range of health-related information in Turkey. This information includes health habits, health care use, prevalent diseases and demographic details. As a team, we analysed health patterns among different age and gender groups, identified variations in health behaviors and disease occurrence, and understood health service utilization. Providing valuable insights for health policies and activities is our ultimate goal.

  • The data, especially when it is visualized such as below, provides us with a good understanding of the situation particularly with respect to age and sex. When we look through the various tables and plots we can see that more women seem to suffer from various health issues than men while men reportedly consume more alcohol than women. This kind of distinction not only lead us to think about sociological and cultural factors, and oppression; it also brings light to a much bigger issue in the medical field that not a lot of people consider: Women were excluded from being subjects for medical research until late 1980s. This source says that only in 1986, NIH established a policy that encouraged researchers to include women in their studies. In 1989, this inclusion encouragement was extended to minorities as well.

  • Too much alcohol can raise blood pressure and weight, increasing risk of a heart attack, stroke and type 2 diabetes, says British Heart Foundation We can actually observe this by looking at Data Set 1’s Plot 1 and Data Set 2’s implications of higher alcohol usage by men. In Data Set 1 - Plot 1 the only categories where numbers for men surpasses those of women are in fact, heart attack and stroke.

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Footnotes

  1. Turkish Statistical Institute. (2023). Türkiye Health Survey, 2022. https://data.tuik.gov.tr/Bulten/Index?p=Turkiye-Health-Survey-2022-49747↩︎