代写留学生论文Research on the Intercultural Adjustment of International Students from the Perspective of Social Networking
Introduction
Nowadays, studying overseas is becoming an increasingly popular choice among the students. For some developing countries, political changes have made studying abroad more easier than before, also, economic prosperity has become a leading cause of this situation ( Byram, 2006 ). It allowed students to have further education, widen their knowledge and horizons, meanwhile cultivating their independence and personalities. Besides, cultural interaction is another factor which will improve international relations. However, living and studying abroad is experiencing another way of life, Cultural differences make the international students has certain difficulties to adapt to a brand new environment from psychological and physiological points of view. Under this circumstance, it is particularly important for oversea students to self-adjustment. International students’ intercultural adjustment in foreign countries is significantly influenced by their social circles. Some studies show that have personal connect with locals helps to shorten the period of psychological adjustment, and students with more international relations adapt better than those with fewer international ties.
Research Objectives
The present study is an attempt to conduct a research about international postgraduates’ social networking experience. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effects of social network on the international students’ intercultural adjustment process and the current situation of international students’ social networking. Also, the other objective is to analyze the relationship between social networking and intercultural adjustment.
Research Questions or Hypothesis
This paper intends to answer the following questions:
How do oversea students manage their social networking with other peoples? What do they expect from social networking?
What elements influence international students’ social networking experience?
How does social circle conduce to overseas students’ intercultural adjustment?
Literature Review
The Definition of Social Network
According to Walker, Macbride and Vachon (1977), the definition of the social network is the set of personal contacts through which the individual maintains his/her social identity and receives emotional support, material aid and services, information and new social contacts. Mulford (1984) suggests that the way in which nodes are connected to one another, both directly and indirectly, influence the behavior of particular nodes and the system as a whole.
In addition, Hall and wellman (1985) pointed out that social network is a limit set or sets of people that are combined with one or more specific types of relationships. The social network is probably supply as a link with these factors which could be family members, relatives, friends, classmates, roommates or their colleagues. This arrangement formed the social network structural characteristics which involve the size, density, diversity, closeness and frequency of network ( Campbell and Hurlbert, 1986 ). Adams and Blieszner (1995) announced that the aim of the social network research is to connect social environment with individuals, active or passive influences related to health, disability and life satisfaction, and obtain opportunities or resources.
Social Network Analysis
Analyze social network is a way to study relationship which is focus on the relationship and structure that people built. Based on Rogers and Kincaid (1981), network analysis can be described as a way of research for identifying the communication structure in a system, in which relational data about communication flows are analyzed by using some type of interpersonal relationships as the units of analysis.
Moreover, it is also an assumption to study social behavior. Wellman (1997) put forward that the social network research is to pay close attention to the interaction between the structure and relationship. Furthermore, social structure is considered as a network of networks that may or may not be partitioned into discrete groups which can influence individuals’ behavior directly or indirectly.
Social Support
Albrecht and Adelman (1987) mentioned that social support is the form of verbal and nonverbal communication between individuals in the social network that provides care and trust to others in order to reduce uncertainty under certain circumstance. Many studies indicate that it is beneficial for people to cope with stress after they get social support. By contrast, the lack of social support may promote the probability that people have psychological panic, emotional and somatic problems (Antonovsky, 1979). On the other hand, Hobfoll and London (1986) announced that the degree of acceptance of social support is depend on individuals’ personality for some extent.
Social Networks and Intercultural Adjustment
Intercultural adjustment which can be divided into psychological and socio-cultural adjustment has four types: integration, assimilation, separation and marginalization (Berry, 1997). Weiss (1998) suggested that the factors which influenced intercultural adjustment can be grouped into three categories: demographic, contextual and personality.
According to Ikeguchi (2007), previous studies about the intercultural adjustment were focused on the depression scale, hopelessness scale and the measures on depressive symptoms and neuroticism which is aiming to develop individual-level measures to assess constructs theoretically and empirically. Flowkorski and Fogel (1999) also indicated that the ethnocentric attitude of host nationals adversely affected the behavior and thought of the overseas students. These former studies may have less consideration of interpersonal aspects and also neglectful to investigate how the social network influence international students’ intercultural adjustment.
Clearly, some subsequent acculturation researches explored overseas students’ intercultural adjustment is greatly influenced by their social circle with natives and other students from different countries. For example, Furnham and Bochner (1982) investigated that it was about 18% of 150 foreign students have close links as friendship with British people in UK. Nonetheless, researches which is about how social network affects students’ intercultural adjustment individually is very defective. After Hull’s (1979) research in this field, some scholars have turned their eyes to international students’ social circle that cope with social difficulties overseas. This research tries to explore international students from NTIC that how they overcome problems caused by cultural differences in their daily life with their social network.
Methodology
Based on Mark, Philip and Adrian (2009), quantitative is predominantly used as a synonym for any data collection technique such as questionnaire or data analysis procedure such as graph or statistics that generates or use numerical data. Questionnaires will be used to accomplish this research. One questionnaire is designed to ask students to provide information about whether things fit well or not, while another questionnaire is administrated to provide information of their social networking overseas. Here is an example of one questionnaire:
Daily Adaptation Minimum Medium Maximum
Food that you enjoy
Transportation System
Accommodation
Social Gathering
Go Shopping
Service
Climate
This research will focus on the NTIC students who do not speak English as their primary language. In order to get high quality feedback, the survey will be carried out in the place of Café with category questions. The data collected with the questionnaires will be processed as statistics which will be used in research. Moreover, statisticians have suggested that the minimum number of 30 or more for statistical analyses is very close to the normal distribution (Stutely, 2003). In this way, the sampling size for this research will be 30 randomly selected from NTIC students.
However, the questions design flows may lead to responses that are ambiguous so that data results are unclear. Thus, the accuracy will be decreased. For the number of the sample, it may not fully indicate the whole opinions of the NTIC students towards these questions.
Timeline:
Week 4 Literature review
Week 5 Review research methods literature, and research some information of the topic
Week 6 Draft literature review
Week 7 Design the questionnaire
Week 8 Analysis the data collected from the questionnaire
Week 9 Finish the final draft and submit it
Ethical Consideration
In order to protect the interviewees’ rights, before use the questionnaires to survey, the purpose and the reason of this research will fully explained to the responders. On the other hand, responders’ privacy should be seriously considered. This survey will be anonymous, the participants should not write their personal information such as name, address etc on the questionnaire. Furthermore, before participants answer each question, interpretations of the questions will be given to the responders so as to avoid deliberate deception, and if some questions invade their privacy, they can refuse to answer this question. Furthermore, the questionnaires which collected from the responders will be destroyed after finish this survey. By this standard, during the progress of the survey, it will not have any direct or indirect harm to the participants.
References:
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Antonovsky, A. (1979). Health Stress and Coping. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Berry, J. W. (1997). Immigration, acculturation, and adaptation. Applied Psychology: An International Review, 46(1), 5-34.
Byman, M (2006). Living and Studing Abroad: Research and Practice. New York: Multiling Matters Ltd.
Campbell, K. E., Marsden, P. V., and Herlbert, J. S (1986). Social Resources and Socio-economic Status: Social Networks, 8, pp97-117.
Florkowski, G., and Fogel, D. (1999). Expatriate adjustment and commitment: The role of hostunit treatment. The Intercultural Journal of Human Resource Management, 10, 783-807.
Furnham, A. and Bochner, S. (1982). Social Difficulty In a Foreign Culture: An Emprical Analysis of Culture Shock. Oxford: Pergamon.
Hall, A. and Wellman, B. (1985). Social Networks and Social Support: Social support and health. New York: Academic Press.
Hobfoll, S. E. and London, P. (1986). The relationship of self-concept and social support to emotional distress among women during war. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 4, 189-203.
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Walker, K. N., Macbride, A., and Vachon, M. L. S (1977). Social Support Networks and The Crisis of Bereavement: Social Science and Medicine. 11(1), pp35-41
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