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';/* Count of all records in the data */
SELECT COUNT(*) AS num_records
FROM students;/* Count of all records per student type (Inter / Dom) */
SELECT inter_dom, COUNT(*) AS num_records
FROM students
GROUP BY inter_dom;/* Looking at average mental health scores by student type (Inter /Dom) */
SELECT
inter_dom,
ROUND(AVG(todep),2) AS avg_depress_score,
ROUND(AVG(tosc),2) AS avg_social_connect_score,
ROUND(AVG(toas),2) AS avg_accult_stress_score
FROM students
WHERE inter_dom IS NOT NULL
GROUP BY inter_dom;/* Looking at summary statistics for all students */
SELECT
MIN(todep) AS min_dep,
MAX(todep) AS max_dep,
ROUND(AVG(todep),2) AS avg_dep,
percentile_disc(0.5) WITHIN GROUP (ORDER BY todep) AS median_dep,
MIN(tosc) AS min_sc,
MAX(tosc) AS max_sc,
ROUND(AVG(tosc),2) AS avg_sc,
percentile_disc(0.5) WITHIN GROUP (ORDER BY tosc) AS median_sc,
MIN(toas) AS min_as,
MAX(toas) AS max_as,
ROUND(AVG(toas),2) AS avg_as,
percentile_disc(0.5) WITHIN GROUP (ORDER BY toas) AS median_as
FROM students;
/* Looking at summary statistics for International students */
SELECT
MIN(todep) AS min_dep,
MAX(todep) AS max_dep,
ROUND(AVG(todep),2) AS avg_dep,
percentile_disc(0.5) WITHIN GROUP (ORDER BY todep) AS median_dep,
MIN(tosc) AS min_sc,
MAX(tosc) AS max_sc,
ROUND(AVG(tosc),2) AS avg_sc,
percentile_disc(0.5) WITHIN GROUP (ORDER BY tosc) AS median_sc,
MIN(toas) AS min_as,
MAX(toas) AS max_as,
ROUND(AVG(toas),2) AS avg_as,
percentile_disc(0.5) WITHIN GROUP (ORDER BY toas) AS median_as
FROM students
WHERE inter_dom = 'Inter';/* Looking at how the length of stay (in years) for International Students affects average
mental health scores. */
SELECT
stay,
ROUND(AVG(todep),2) AS average_depsc,
ROUND(AVG(tosc),2) AS average_scs,
ROUND(AVG(toas),2) AS average_sc
FROM students
WHERE inter_dom = 'Inter'
GROUP BY stay
ORDER BY stay DESC;