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) |
MY WAY:
First let's check if international students have higher score of depression than domestic ones
SELECT inter_dom,AVG(todep) AS average_depression_score
FROM students
where inter_dom IS NOT null
GROUP BY inter_domSince PHQ-9 test score range is between 0 and 27, it seems that both domestic and international students have similar depression levels
now let's check the correlation between total score of social connectedness and depression score in internation students:
-- Start coding here...
SELECT CORR(tosc,todep)
FROM students
where inter_dom = 'Inter'as the result above shows, there is a moderate negative correlation between social connectedness and depression meaning that as the level of social connectedness increases the chance of being depressed tends to decrease and vice versa.
let's do the same thing for the accultrative stress (I could run both codes in one query but I decided to do them separately for clarity):
SELECT CORR(toas,todep)
FROM students
where inter_dom = 'Inter'The correlation score came out to about 0.4116, which means a moderate positive relationship between acculturative stress and depression for international students. In other words, as acculturative stress increases, depression scores tend to rise too, but it’s not a super strong connection (less strong than the effect of social connecteness???eh?)
What about length of stay? let’s dive into the effect of length of stay on our international students' mental health. Is time a friend or foe in this adventure?
SELECT CORR(stay,todep)
FROM students
where inter_dom = 'Inter'