Antecedents And Outcomes Of Psychological And Sociocultural Adaptations Among International Postgraduate Students In Malaysian Public Universities
Loading...
Date
2016-06
Authors
Darastani, Azadeh Shafaei
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
This study investigated the nexus of antecedent variables - cross-cultural adaptation - outcome variables among postgraduate students pursuing their studies in Malaysian public universities. The antecedents selected in the study include both individual factors (i.e. English language proficiency, media usage, intention to stay in Malaysia after graduation, adjustment attitude to host culture and attachment attitude to own culture) and situational factors (i.e. social support, perceived stereotype image, and perceived complexity). Cross-cultural adaptation includes both psychological adaptation and sociocultural adaptation. The outcomes of cross-cultural adaptation comprise perceived psychological well-being, academic performance satisfaction, and positive word of mouth (i.e. international postgraduate students’ willingness in promoting Malaysian higher education institutions to others). To carry out the empirical study and test the proposed research model, data were obtained from 1186 randomly selected international postgraduate students in six Malaysian public universities, recognized as research universities, through administering an online questionnaire. One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), using SPSS version 21, was performed to examine the similarities and differences
among the three groups of international postgraduate students (i.e. Asian, Middle Eastern and African). In addition, Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) technique, using SmartPLS version 3.0, was conducted to test the proposed research model. The findings of this study showed that almost all of the antecedent variables are significantly related to both psychological and sociocultural adaptations except two of them (i.e. media usage towards psychological adaptation and attachment attitude towards sociocultural adaptation). Moreover, the results of multi-group analysis indicated that international students’ geographical orientation (i.e. Asia, Middle East and Africa) is an important factor for making discrepancies on the relationships in the proposed research model. Analysing the results of importance-performance matrix analysis (IPMA) for word of mouth as well as psychological and sociocultural adaptations elucidated the areas which require more attention with regards to international students’ cross-cultural adaptation. Overall, the current study illuminates that international students’ successful cross-cultural adaptation strongly influences the ultimate outcome (i.e. positive word of mouth) that is willingness to promote Malaysian educational institutions to others. One of the most important implications of this study is to enhance the resilience of higher education in Malaysia against unprecedented risks and setbacks, and foster a self-sustaining promotion of higher education system in Malaysia.
Description
Keywords
The nexus of antecedent variables - cross-cultural adaptation - outcome variables among postgraduate students , pursuing their studies in Malaysian public universities.