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 view the data in students
SELECT *
FROM students;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'
GROUP BY stay
ORDER BY stay DESC;- Based on this analysis, we can see that international students usually stay for 1-4 years, mainly 1.
- The average depression score is not very different accross international students in the first 4 years, though the higest one is for those who stay for 3 years.
- Because only 14 international students stayed for 4 years and the average depression score was 8.57, we can see that depression is very high for that group, which makes sense due to how high their average acculturative stress is.
- Not many international students stay beyond the 4-year mark, but based on how the count of international students decline year-over-year and the average depression score remains very high, while the average acculturative stress increases year-over-year, and the average social connectedness declines drastically between years 3 and 4, we can deduct that length of stay has a detrimental impact on mental health.