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';
First, lets check the total records in the dataframe students
, even though it can be seen in the bottom portion of the table shown.
-- Start coding here...
SELECT COUNT(*) AS total_records
FROM students
How many international students are we dealing with?
SELECT inter_dom, COUNT(*) AS count_inter_dom
FROM students
GROUP BY inter_dom
Inter national students =201 , Dom estic students=67, Null = 18. Now let's shift our focus to length of stay in Japan.
SELECT stay, count(*)
FROM students
GROUP BY stay
ORDER BY 2 DESC
Most students are in the 1-4 years of stay period. Now lets check the average score for the 3 diagnostic tests for all students.
SELECT AVG(todep), AVG(tosc), AVG(toas)
FROM students
How does this break down when compared for international vs local students?
SELECT inter_dom, AVG(todep), AVG(tosc), AVG(toas)
FROM students
WHERE inter_dom IS NOT NULL
GROUP BY inter_dom
How does length of stay factor in the whole equation? Specially for the international students. Let's see how many years the international students are in Japan.