Prevalence and Determinants of Depression among International Students

401080 Research Protocol Design and Practice 2019
Assignment 2 – Research Proposal
Student name: Student ID:
Title
Prevalence and determinants of depression among international students studying
in western Sydney University.
Research problem
There has been a heightened global empowerment of education over the
last decades and this has resulted in an increased flux of students migrating to
different other countries for graduate and other higher education courses.
Students of new generations are aspiring for quality international education and
professional skill development and they perceive the ‘answer’ lies in international
education. Though international education(Wu, Garza & Guzman, 2015) has a
number of advantages like improvement of intercultural communication (Piller,
2017), certain instrumental skills (Blanchard et al., 2015) that can be only learned
in a specific countries, widening of generic consciousness, aligning with global
standards of education and global professional framework, understanding
sociocultural implications of a country and developing personal intrapersonal (Xu
et al., 2019) and interpersonal skills in order to cope with the foreign country’s
social framework.
There are certain barriers to international educational system as well.
These barriers are of cultural, sociocultural, socio-psychological and behavioural
origin. When a foreign student visits a native institution, there begins a complex
change in socio-dynamics of a university class or college or university as a whole.
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401080 Research Protocol Design and Practice 2019
Firstly, language barrier is the most primary barrier that comes to play – even if the
lingua franca is, say suppose, English but there are certain differences that
remains in the way the two students of two different communicate by using ‘words’
which mean somewhat different to each one. The implied meaning of words can
be different in different countries and it might be a completely different expression
meant by certain word in a specific country. The next language problem is ‘dialect’
which are again very specific to specific regions to the words which complicates
the intercultural communication even more. The other barriers can lie the very
subjects that the students has chosen to study in a foreign country – for example,
a science subject will use universally applicable theories and hypotheses and in
every way, the scientific language has to mean the same but for an arts class,
there can be different figurative, denotative, connotative and implication issues
related to certain speech or expression taught in a class. All these can influence
the behaviour of a foreign student who can suffer from depression while going
through the acculturation process (Mitchell, Del Fabbro & Shaw, 2017).
What is already known
Mental disorders form the bulk of adolescent and young adult problems
(Bruffaerts et al., 2018) and foreign university students have been reported to be a
high-risk social group (Greger, H. K., Myhre, A. K., Lydersen, S., & Jozefiak,
2015). Different Australian researches among the university students have
focused deeply on a generalized anxiety disorder and generalised psychologically
induced distress. According to study, males are found to be suffering from
depression than females who suffered more from generalised anxiety disorder (Bui
et al., 2017). Other groups who are reported to be suffering from generalized
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401080 Research Protocol Design and Practice 2019
anxiety disorder are young students (Farrer et al., 2016), students who are
financially distressed (Mulder & Cashin, 2015) suffers from the same problem,
students belonging low economic backgrounds are reported to be a high risk
group as well, foreign students who are having accommodation problems (Ruming
& Dowling, 2017). Factors related to the university/college setting have produced
less consistent correlates. There had been contradictory research results as well –
one some it has been reported that students in the 1st year suffer maximally from
mental health problems compared to final year students and some other research
studies implied on the senior year students suffering more psychologically than
first year students. As discussed before as well, science students prevailed a
lower psychological sufferance rate as compared to students of Arts and
commerce which involves various socioeconomic and sociocultural study
perspectives as well. Many surveys reported equal levels of distress levels
(Larcombe et al., 2016) in both international and domestic students. Risk
behaviours (Lovell et al., 2015), like harmful drinking, alcohol and other substance
abuse (McAlaney et al., 2015) and decreased physical inactivity, anxiety and
paranoia (Singh, 2018) has been identified as well. Alcohol and other substances
like drug abuse amongst college going students and the prevalence of drug
markets in Australia has been strongly related as psychosocial factors that cause
depression (Davies et al., 2016). Other complex psychological issues like body
image distortion, sociological and personal complexes along with social isolation
has been identified as driving factors in development of depression. Relationship
stress (Bergin & Pakenham, 2016) amongst young students and related substance
abuse are other factors as well. Intrapersonal and interpersonal problems driven
by cognitive development (Nghiem, 2015) issues are the major underpinnings of
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401080 Research Protocol Design and Practice 2019
depression in international students. High levels of psychological distress and
stress among the Australian students which has often reported to proceed to
depressive symptoms if not treated. Limited studies have focussed on the teaching
system to be a prime factor for development of anxiety and depression amongst
Australian university students.
Gap in knowledge
The above literatures provides insight to various types of barriers and problems
associated with Australian university education and how it affects Australian
native and international students in a unique way. While majority of the
researches has focussed on Intercultural problems, intercultural communication,
alcohol and other substance abuse, nature of the subject and the scope of
syllabus, the type of anxiety caused and even how depression develops due to
unchecked accumulation of anxiety and distress – no studies has yet focussed
on the individual behavioural traits of an individual which are major intrinsic
factors leading to the prevalence of external behavioural and social problems
that finally results in depression.
Research question
The research questions are –
1). What is the prevalence of depressive symptoms in International students?
2). What are the determinants of depressive symptoms in international students?
3). How does behavioural traits of an individual acts an important determinant of
depression in international students studying in western Sydney university?
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