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) |
1. Connect to DB and inspect records
- How many total records?
- Total: 286
SELECT count(*) as total_records
FROM students;-- What does the data look like?
SELECT *
FROM students
LIMIT 10;2. How many international and domestic students are there?
- Do we have any unexpected values in inter_dom colum?
--
SELECT inter_dom, COUNT(inter_dom) AS Count_student_type
FROM students
GROUP BY inter_dom
ORDER BY 1 DESC;-- NULL values in inter_dom
-- CSV may have bad values
SELECT *
FROM students
WHERE inter_dom NOT LIKE 'D%'
AND inter_dom NOT LIKE 'I%';3. Where are the international students from?
SELECT region, COUNT(inter_dom) AS inter_region
FROM students
WHERE inter_dom = 'Inter'
GROUP BY region
ORDER BY COUNT(inter_dom) DESC;4. Understanding the scores
- International Students
- Domestic Students
-- Find out the basic summary of the diagnostic tests for all student
SELECT inter_dom,
ROUND(MIN(todep),2) AS min_phq,
ROUND(MAX(todep),2) AS max_phq,
ROUND(AVG(todep),2) as avg_phq,
ROUND(MIN(tosc),2) AS min_scs,
ROUND(MAX(tosc),2) AS max_scs,
ROUND(AVG(tosc),2) as avg_scs,
ROUND(MIN(toas),2) AS min_as,
ROUND(MAX(toas),2) AS max_as,
ROUND(AVG(toas),2) as avg_as
FROM students
WHERE inter_dom in ('Inter', 'Dom')
GROUP BY inter_dom;
International Focus
The study found that international students presented having a higher risk of having mental health difficulties. Recall, that the data is also skewed towards international students. Let's take a closer look at this student group.
5. Age vs. Mental health scores