BRFSS 2023: Marijuana Use and Co-occurring Health Behaviors in Illinois Adults

This project analyzes survey data from the 2023 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) to explore whether marijuana use is associated with other behavioral health indicators—namely poor mental health, cigarette smoking, and alcohol consumption—among adults in Illinois.

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Research Questions

• Do marijuana users report more days of poor mental health?
• Are they more likely to smoke or drink alcohol?
• What is the age distribution of marijuana users compared to the general population?

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Tools Used

• Language: Python 3 (Jupyter Notebook)
• Libraries: pandas, matplotlib, seaborn
• Data Cleaning: categorical recoding, missing value filtering, behavioral variable mapping
• Data Sources:
  • BRFSS 2023 Illinois Microdata (.XPT)
  • American Community Survey (ACS)

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Visualizations

• Mental Health vs. Marijuana Use (bar plot)
• Smoking Status vs. Marijuana Use (stacked bar plot)
• Alcohol Frequency vs. Marijuana Use (bar plot)
• Age Distribution of Marijuana Users (pie chart)

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File Structure

The main anlysis is in the file data_clean.ipynb

public-health-behaviour-data-analysis---marijuana-use