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';-- Explore and understand the data
-- #1 count the number of records
SELECT COUNT(*)
FROM students;-- Explore and understand the data
-- #2 Grouping by inter_dom to see how many international and domestic students
SELECT inter_dom, COUNT(inter_dom)
FROM students
GROUP BY inter_dom
ORDER BY 2 desc;-- Filter to undestand the data for each student type
--#1 For internationl students
SELECT *
FROM students
WHERE inter_dom = 'Inter';-- Filter to undestand the data for each student type
--#2 For domestic students
SELECT *
FROM students
WHERE inter_dom = 'Dom';-- Filter to undestand the data for each student type
--#1 For status in null in column inter_dom
SELECT *
FROM students
WHERE inter_dom is null;-- Check the summary statistics of the diagnostics scores for all students
-- todep, tosc, toas
SELECT MIN(todep) AS min_phq,
MAX(todep) AS max_phq,
ROUND(AVG(todep)) AS avg_phq,
MIN(tosc) AS min_scs,
MAX(tosc) AS max_scs,
ROUND(AVG(todep)) AS avg_scs,
MIN(toas) AS min_as,
MAX(toas) AS max_as,
ROUND(AVG(toas)) AS avg_as
FROM students;-- Check the summary statistics of the diagnostics scores for internaltional students only
-- todep, tosc, toas
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(todep), 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 = 'Inter';-- See if the impact of length of stay affects the test results for international students
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;