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';SELECT COUNT(students) AS total_records
FROM students;SELECT inter_dom AS student_type, COUNT(inter_dom) AS count_inter_dom
FROM students
GROUP BY inter_dom;-- To see if Japanese proficiency level has something to do with suicide of female international student
SELECT japanese_cate, COUNT(japanese_cate)
FROM students
WHERE inter_dom = 'Inter' AND gender = 'Female'
GROUP BY japanese_cate;
-- the result shows that female international students with low proficiency level of Japanese have higher suicide-- To see if academic level has something to do with suicide
SELECT academic, COUNT(academic)
FROM students
WHERE inter_dom = 'Inter' AND gender = 'Female' AND japanese_cate = 'Low'
GROUP BY academic;-- Find the summary statistics for each diagnostic test using aggregate functions.
-- Total score of depression of all students
SELECT
ROUND(MIN(todep), 2) AS min_phq,
ROUND(MAX(todep), 2) AS max_phq,
ROUND(AVG(todep), 2) AS avg_phq
FROM students;-- Total score of depression of international students
SELECT
ROUND(MIN(todep), 2) AS min_phq,
ROUND(MAX(todep), 2) AS max_phq,
ROUND(AVG(todep), 2) AS avg_phq
FROM students
WHERE inter_dom = 'Inter';-- Total score of social connectedness (SCS test)
SELECT
ROUND(MIN(tosc), 2) AS min_sc,
ROUND(MAX(tosc), 2) AS max_sc,
ROUND(AVG(tosc), 2) AS avg_sc
FROM students;-- Total score of acculturative stress (ASISS test)
SELECT
ROUND(MIN(toas), 2) AS min_as,
ROUND(MAX(toas), 2) AS max_as,
ROUND(AVG(toas), 2) AS avg_ac
FROM students;-- See the impact of length of stay
SELECT
stay,
ROUND(AVG(todep), 2) AS average_phq,
ROUND(AVG(tosc), 2) AS average_scs,
ROUND(AVG(toas), 2) AS average_as
FROM students
WHERE inter_dom = 'Inter'
GROUP BY stay
ORDER BY stay DESC;