Does going to university in a different country affect your mental health? A Japanese international university surveyed its students in 2018 and published a study the following year that was approved by several ethical and regulatory boards.
The study found that international students have a higher risk of mental health difficulties than the general population, and that social connectedness (belonging to a social group) and acculturative stress (stress associated with joining a new culture) are predictive of depression.
Explore the students data using PostgreSQL to find out if you would come to a similar conclusion for international students and see if the length of stay is a contributing factor.
Here is a data description of the columns you may find helpful.
| Field Name | Description |
|---|---|
inter_dom | Types of students (international or domestic) |
japanese_cate | Japanese language proficiency |
english_cate | English language proficiency |
academic | Current academic level (undergraduate or graduate) |
age | Current age of student |
stay | Current length of stay in years |
todep | Total score of depression (PHQ-9 test) |
tosc | Total score of social connectedness (SCS test) |
toas | Total score of acculturative stress (ASISS test) |
-- Run this code to save the CSV file as students
SELECT *
FROM 'students.csv';Exploratory Data Analysis
Depression
Doing the analysis of the depression levels of international students from the results of the PHQ-99 depression test.
-- Start coding here...
SELECT inter_dom,
MIN(todep) AS min_phq,
MAX(todep) AS max_phq,
ROUND(AVG(todep), 2) AS avg_phq
FROM students
WHERE inter_dom IS NOT null
GROUP BY inter_dom;Social Connections
Doing the analysis of the results of social connectedness (SCS) test.
SELECT inter_dom,
MIN(tosc) AS min_scs,
MAX(tosc) AS max_scs,
ROUND(AVG(tosc), 2) AS avg_scs
FROM students
WHERE inter_dom IS NOT null
GROUP BY inter_dom;Acculturative Stress
Doing the analysis of the results of acculturative stress (ASISS) test.
SELECT inter_dom,
MIN(toas) AS min_as,
MAX(toas) AS max_as,
ROUND(AVG(toas), 2) AS avg_as
FROM students
WHERE inter_dom IS NOT null
GROUP BY inter_dom;Length of stay
Exploring the lenght of stay of international students
SELECT stay_cate, stay,
COUNT(stay) AS count_stay,
ROUND(AVG(stay), 2) AS avg_stay
FROM students
WHERE inter_dom = 'Inter'
AND inter_dom IS NOT null
GROUP BY stay_cate, stay
ORDER BY stay_cate, stay DESC;Analysis Results
SELECT stay,
COUNT(inter_dom) AS count_int,
ROUND(AVG(todep), 2) AS average_phq,
ROUND(AVG(tosc), 2) AS average_scs,
ROUND(AVG(toas), 2) AS average_as
FROM students
WHERE inter_dom = 'Inter'
AND inter_dom IS NOT null
GROUP BY stay
ORDER BY stay DESC
LIMIT 9;SELECT inter_dom, stay_cate,
COUNT(inter_dom) AS count_int,
ROUND(AVG(todep), 2) AS average_phq,
ROUND(AVG(tosc), 2) AS average_scs,
ROUND(AVG(toas), 2) AS average_as
FROM students
WHERE inter_dom IS NOT null
GROUP BY inter_dom, stay_cate
ORDER BY inter_dom, stay_cate;