Analyzing Students' Mental Health
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) |
Let's start by counting all of the records in the data, then all records per student type to see how the records are categorized and scored.
-- Save the CSV file as students
SELECT *
FROM 'students.csv';-- Counts per student type (`inter_dom`)
SELECT
inter_dom,
COUNT(*) AS counts
FROM students
GROUP BY inter_dom;- Filter the data to see how it differs between the student types.
- Find the summary statistics of the diagnostic tests for all students using aggregate functions, rounding the test scores to two decimal places, remembering to use aliases.
-- Aggregates for depression score
SELECT
COUNT(*) AS counts,
SUM(todep) AS total_dep_score,
ROUND(AVG(todep), 2) AS avg_dep_score,
MIN(todep) AS min_dep_score,
MAX(todep) AS max_dep_score
FROM students;Repeat the calculation of aggregates by only taking in values wherein the type of student is international.
-- Aggregates for depression score of international students
SELECT
COUNT(*) AS counts,
SUM(todep) AS total_dep_score,
ROUND(AVG(todep), 2) AS avg_dep_score,
MIN(todep) AS min_dep_score,
MAX(todep) AS max_dep_score
FROM students
WHERE inter_dom = 'Inter';-- Aggreagates for social connectedness score of international students
SELECT
COUNT(*) AS counts,
SUM(tosc) AS total_tosc_score,
ROUND(AVG(tosc), 2) AS avg_tosc_score,
MIN(tosc) AS min_tosc_score,
MAX(tosc) AS max_tosc_score
FROM students
WHERE inter_dom = 'Inter';-- Aggregates for acculturative stress score of international students
SELECT
COUNT(*) AS counts,
SUM(toas) AS total_toas_score,
ROUND(AVG(toas), 2) AS avg_toas_score,
MIN(toas) AS min_toas_score,
MAX(toas) AS max_toas_score
FROM students
WHERE inter_dom = 'Inter';See if length of stay impacts the average diagnostic scores rounded to two decimal places for international students, and order the results by descending order of the length of stay.
-- Checking on length of stay values
SELECT DISTINCT stay
FROM students;