Analyzing Students' Mental Health in SQL
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';Start by counting all of the records in the data
SELECT COUNT(*)
FROM 'students.csv';Then count all records per student type to see how the records are categorized and scored
SELECT inter_dom, COUNT(inter_dom) AS student_type
FROM 'students.csv'
GROUP BY inter_dom;Filter the data to see how it differs between the student types
SELECT academic, age, stay, japanese, todep, tosc, apd, ahome
FROM 'students.csv'
WHERE inter_dom = 'Inter';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
SELECT inter_dom,
ROUND(AVG(todep),2) AS average_depression,
ROUND(AVG(tosc),2) AS average_social_connectedness,
ROUND(AVG(toas),2) AS average_acculterative_stress
FROM 'students.csv'
GROUP BY inter_dom;Repeat this to summarize the data for international students only
SELECT
ROUND(AVG(todep),2) AS average_depression,
ROUND(AVG(tosc),2) AS average_social_connectedness,
ROUND(AVG(toas),2) AS average_acculterative_stress
FROM 'students.csv'
WHERE inter_dom = 'Inter';