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';-- Count the number of records in the dataset
SELECT COUNT(*) as total_records
FROM students;-- Count the number of records for each student type
SELECT inter_dom, COUNT(*) as count_inter_dom
FROM students
GROUP BY inter_dom;-- Explore the data for each student type in inter_dom
SELECT * FROM students
WHERE inter_dom = 'Inter';SELECT * FROM students
WHERE inter_dom = 'Dom';SELECT * FROM students
WHERE inter_dom IS NULL;-- Find the summary statistics for each diagnostic test
SELECT ROUND(MIN(todep), 2) AS min_phq, ROUND(MAX(todep), 2) AS max_phq,
ROUND(AVG(todep), 2) AS avg_phq,
ROUND(MIN(tosc), 2) AS min_scs, ROUND(MAX(tosc), 2) AS max_scs,
ROUND(AVG(tosc), 2) AS avg_scs,
ROUND(MIN(toas), 2) AS min_as, ROUND(MAX(toas), 2) AS max_as,
ROUND(AVG(toas), 2) AS avg_as
FROM students;-- Summarize the diagnostic test scores for international students only
SELECT ROUND(AVG(todep), 2) AS avg_phq, ROUND(AVG(tosc), 2) AS avg_scs, ROUND(AVG(toas), 2) AS avg_as
FROM students
WHERE inter_dom = 'Inter';-- Investigate the impact of length of stay on diagnostic scores
SELECT stay,
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'
GROUP BY stay
ORDER BY stay DESC;