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 AS "Stay (years)",
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
stay IS NOT NULL
AND inter_dom LIKE 'Inter'
GROUP BY stay
ORDER BY stay DESC
LIMIT 9;Analysing the table on top, we can conclude that there is not enough data to determine a correlation between being international and high levels of depression with the length of the stay in Japan (relevant sample sizes, between year one and three, show relative low averages of depression), that there is a steady average between 33% and 38% of social connectedness among the international students (which indicate that more than half of the international students surveyed do not feel connected), and that there is a very high acculturative stress between the participants and that it shows a rising tendency over the first four years of stay and then a decline (nonetheless, as pointed out before, the sample size in over 5 years of stay is minimal and should not be considered accurate nor significative).