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';-- counting all of the records in the data
select count(*) as total_records
from students;
-- Query to retrieve the count of records per student type, categorizing and scoring the records.
SELECT inter_dom, COUNT(inter_dom) AS count_inter_dom
FROM students
GROUP BY inter_dom;-- Filter the data to see how it differs between the student types.
SELECT *
FROM students
WHERE inter_dom NOT LIKE 'D%' AND inter_dom NOT LIKE 'I%' OR inter_dom IS NULL;-- international students form
SELECT "region", COUNT(inter_dom) AS total_inter_dom
FROM students
WHERE inter_dom = 'Inter'
GROUP BY "region";-- Query the basics summary statistics of the diagnostics scores for all students
SELECT
MIN(todep) AS min_phq,
MAX(todep) AS max_phq,
ROUND(AVG(todep), 2) AS avg_phq,
MIN(ToSc) AS min_scs,
MAX(ToSc) AS max_scs,
ROUND(AVG(ToSc), 2) AS avg_scs,
MIN(ToAs) AS min_as,
MAX(ToAs) AS max_as,
ROUND(AVG(ToAs), 2) AS avg_as
FROM students;-- summary statistics for domestic and inter students
SELECT
MIN(todep) AS min_phq,
MAX(todep) AS max_phq,
ROUND(AVG(todep), 2) AS avg_phq,
MIN(ToSc) AS min_scs,
MAX(ToSc) AS max_scs,
ROUND(AVG(ToSc), 2) AS avg_scs,
MIN(ToAs) AS min_as,
MAX(ToAs) AS max_as,
ROUND(AVG(ToAs), 2) AS avg_as
FROM students
WHERE inter_dom IN ('Inter', 'Dom')
GROUP BY inter_dom;-- Find the average scores by length of stay for international students, and view them in descending order
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;