College adjusment of international students: the role of gender, acculturative stress, coping skills, cultural distance, and perceived social support

Date

2010

Author

Otlu, Fatma Nihal

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The purpose of the present study is to investigate the role of gender, acculturative stress, coping skills, cultural distance, and perceived social support in predicting college adjustment scores of international students who attend universities in Ankara. The sample of the study consisted of 170 (135 males and 35 females) volunteered international students from one private and four state universities in Ankara. A Personal Data Sheet developed by the researcher, Student Adaptation to College Questionnaire (Baker & Siryk, 1984), Acculturative Stress Scale for International Students (Sandhu & Asrabadi, 1994), Brief COPE (Carver, 1997), Cultural Distance Scale (BektaĢ, 2004), and the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (Zimet, Dahlem, Zimet, & Farley, 1988) were used to collect data. Hierarchical multiple regression analysis was conducted to analyze data. The results of the analysis revealed that acculturative stress, positive coping skills, and cultural distance were significant predictors of college adjustment scores of international students while gender, negative coping skills, passive coping skills, and perceived social support were not. All predictor variables explained 9.8 % of the total variance in college adjustment scores. The study results demonstrated that international students who have low acculturative stress, low perceived cultural distance and high use of positive coping skills were better adjusted to college.

Subject Keywords

Perception., Adjustment disorders., Stress management for teenagers.

URI

http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12612769/index.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/20186

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis