The gesedata.csv provides dataset on the number of stressful life events, the presence of a certain type of gene and the score of depression from about 1600 subjects.
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The result of the multi variate linear regression analysis on the dataset, assuming gene and stressful life events as independent variables, shows an extremely strong association between the number of stressful life events and the score of depression (p<0.001). With more stressful life events happened, the subjects tend to have higher depression scores. The result predicts the presence of the gene may lead to a mitigation of the depression. However, the effect is not significant (p=0.29)
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After further analysing of the data, I decided to focus on subjects who were brought up in ‘worse than normal’ environment, using the median number of stressful life events as a threshold.
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The result from the subset of the data confirms the extremely strong association between the number of stressful events and the high score of depression. In addition, the result shows a high level of significance that the presence of the gene leads to lower depression scores.
I can conclude with high confidence (>99.9%) that negative life growing environments can trigger person’s onset of depression. Based on the provided data, there is also evidence shows that the presence of a certain type of gene can suppress the level of depression, this effect of the gene becomes significant (>95% confidence) among the people who grows up in relatively negative environment.