“You are not Alone for I am here with You”: An Examination of Acculturative Stress, Interpersonal social support and Use of Online Ethnic Social Groups among Chinese International Students
Paper submitted to the Communication and Technology Division of the International Communication Association for presentation at the annual conference, New Orleans, LA.
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Abstract The present study investigated acculturative stress, interpersonal social support and use of online ethnic social groups among Chinese international students. A survey was conducted among 112 Chinese students who attended a southeast university in the United States. The results suggested that those who were more satisfied with their interpersonal social support networks had less perceived discrimination, perceived hatred and negative feelings caused by change, but not less fear. Among the students who had used online ethnic social groups, those who reported receiving higher amounts of online informational support from those groups experienced lower level of acculturative stress. Students who reported obtaining higher amount of online emotional support also experienced lower level of acculturative stress associated with perceived hatred. A negative relationship was established between interpersonal social support network satisfaction and perceived online information support.
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Key Concepts: Acculturation, acculturative Stress, social support, online social groups
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“You are not Alone for I am here with You”: An Examination of Acculturative Stress, Interpersonal Social Support, and Use of Online Ethnic Social Groups among Chinese International Students
Social networks have been found to moderate the effect of stress in predicting depression, hopelessness and even suicidal ideation (Flannery & Wieman, 1989; Yang & Clum, 1994).
Social support can be provided in the form of emotional support, instrumental aid (or tangible assistance), and advice or information support (Salem, Bogat, & Reid, 1997).
It plays a very positive role in an individual’s coping with stress. According to Cohen and Wills (1985), social support can operate both by contributing to the resources available to individuals to cope with the stressor and by reducing the stress response to the stressor. In addition to traditional interpersonal social support, Internet social groups have greatly increased the possibility for individuals to communicate with others about their common interests and concerns. As Sparks (1992) noted, the potential benefits of participation in online social groups include “24 hour availability, selective participation in entering and responding to messages, anonymity and privacy” (p.62).
Much of the research has been focused on medical or health related support groups (e.g, Sharf, 1997; Sullivan, 1997; Turner, Grube, & Meyers, 2001; Wright, 2002).
However, few studies have looked at the relationship between online social support and individuals’ stress resulting from life change or cultural adaptation. The purpose of the present study is to investigate the relationships among the level of acculturative stress of Chinese international students in the United State, their interpersonal support networks, and their level of activity in online ethnic social groups as well as perceived supports from these online groups.
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Review of Literature International Students in the United States The cultural diversity of the United States is reflected in the large size of the international student population in American higher educational institutions (Bradley, Parr, Lan, Bingi, & Gould, 1995).
According to the data collected by Institute of International Education (IIE), the enrollment of International students has increased by more than 17 times in recent 50 years. After 9/11 attacks, despite various policy changes, the total of international students attending colleges and universities in the United States keeps hitting a new record each year. During the 2002/2003 academic year, there were 586,323 international students in the U.S. (IIE, 2004).
The top five countries of origin for international students in the U.S. are all from South or East Asia: India, China, Korea, Japan and Taiwan. The trend toward increasing international enrollment suggests that International students continue to see the U.S. as their premier place for higher education. Although international students may have diverse cultural, social, religious and political backgrounds, they tend to share certain characteristics (Thomas & Althen, 1989).
They are a group in transition who live in a foreign country to pursue their educational goals. Unlike immigrants, most international students plan to return to their home countries eventually (Sakurako, 2000).
During the years of studying abroad, international students have to deal with various educational and social difficulties. In addition to fulfilling basic study tasks, they also need to adapt or adjust to a sociocultural system that is different from their own (Zimmermann, 1995).
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Acculturative Stress International students often encounter a number of academic and cultural challenges related to acculturation. Acculturation, a process of adjusting to a nonnative culture (Rogler, Cortes, & Malgadi, 1991), involves many changes in identity, relationships, routines and ideologies about self, work and families. When individuals undergo these changes in their lives, they feel excessive physical and/or psychological demands for adaptation, which can cause a unique type of distress called acculturative stress (Allen, Amason, & Holmes, 1998).
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The stress experienced by international students is often linked to difficulties with language use, cultural adaptation, educational progress and other issues (Parr, Bradley, & Bingi, 1992; Sakurako, 2000).
Although each international student may experience some level of stress in the process of adaptation to the new environment, the greater the cultural distance, the more stressful the adjustment is likely to be (Furnham & Bochner, 1982; Kim, 1991; Yang & Clum, 1994).
Among all the international students in the United States, Asian international students need to put forth more effort in the adaptation process due to the relatively larger cultural distance. Hofstede (1984) has created an individualism index to evaluate a culture’s relative lociation on the individualism-collectivism dimension. The United States and some other western countries are at the extreme of individualism, while most Asian countries (e.g., Pakistan, Indonesia, South Korea and China) show a strong collectivist orientation (Lustig & Koester, 2003).
This indicates that there are basic differences in cultural values. Empirical evidence suggests that acculturative stress is related to depression among Asian samples (Choi, 1997; Shin, 1994).
Those students who hold unrealistically high expectations about their competence and their lives in America may face a deep sense of loss accompanied by painful feelings of inferiority (Sandhu, 1995).
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Excessive exposure to stressful situations can also lead to health problems such as lack of appetite and sleep, low stamina and energy levels, and headaches (Thomas & Althen, 1989).
Stress and Coping with Social Support Networks According to Lazarus (Folkman & Lazarus 1988; Lazarus, 1999), individuals under stress have to cope with inadequately met demands from the internal or external environment by resorting to resources at their disposal. One of the main resources is the support obtained from their social networks. Social support includes giving and receiving tangible or emotional assistance, empathy, validation, or information (Vaux, 1988).
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Cobb (1976) highlighted the “stress-buffering property” of social support, which can buffer the undesirable effects of stress and improve social functioning. Under stressful life situations, individuals are likely to evaluate their social support. Perceived social support itself can lead to more positive attitudes toward life problems and increase confidence in dealing with them (Rudd, 1990).
Many studies have found supportive evidence for this view (e.g., Berry, 1997; Robert, Cox, Shannon, & Wells, 1994; Yang & Clum, 1994).
Among these studies, Berry (1997) explored coping strategies in dealing with the stress generated from life changes during cross-cultural transitions. The result demonstrated that social support, which may involve supportive relationships with both cultures and linking to one’s heritage, is associated with a lower level of stress. Verbal assistance is an indispensable part of social support. This assistance generally contains instrumentally focused messages and/or through emotionally focused messages (Allen et al., 1998).
Instrumentally focused messages provide information or advice, or promise direct action or material help. Emotionally focused supportive messages include esteem-enhancing remarks or empathic messages which reflect an understanding of others’ distressed state. This type of supportive message conveys caring for individuals, not merely his/her task
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accomplishments. Allen and her colleagues reported that emotional social support is more closely related to the reduction of acculturative stress than is instrumental social support. Social support is extremely important for the acculturation of international students. However, they are usually far away their families, relatives, and friends at home, so these traditional social networks cannot really provide them immediate social support. International students have to find new sources and develop a social network to help them handle life problems. As Kim (1988) stressed, the relational network of newcomers can help facilitate their adaptation to the new cultural environment. The adaptive functions of the relational network, which mainly includes emotional support and information support, can provide newcomers a sense of security and wellbeing as well as various types of knowledge, ranging from verbal and nonverbal communication rules to aesthetic and emotional sensibilities of the host culture. Thus the following hypothesis was advanced: H1: The size and satisfaction of one’s interpersonal social support network will be negatively related to acculturative stress. online support Networks Increased access to the Internet has enhanced the opportunities for individuals to communicate with others about shared interests and concerns. The arising of various Internet social support groups brings about new hope for people who are undergoing emotional or physical hardship (Salem et al., 1997; Sullivan, 1997; Winzelberg, 1997).
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Online social support groups, “support groups without walls” (Brennan, Moore, & Smyth, 1991), have become an alternative source of help for people under various social or psychological stresses. According to King (1994), online social groups or communities are “groups of people that exchange ideas and information through the posting of message on electronic bulletin boards (BBS), by sending
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email to a common list of recipients and by exchanging private emails” (p. 47).
Despite the geographic distance and the anonymity, members in an online social group “share common problems, help each other toward mutual goals, and support each other though good times and bad” (Ferguson, 1996, p. 41).
An investigation of online mutual-help groups suggested that participants in these groups communicate in ways that resemble face-to-face groups, such as high levels of support, acceptance, and positive feelings, but they tend to engage in more emotional support and self-disclosure (Salem et al., 1997).
Similar to the traditional types of social support, the two major forms of support from online groups are emotional and informational support (Wright, 2002).
Emotional support and understanding are particularly helpful for those who feel that they cannot change their stressful situation. Informational support may help people experiencing life problems feel more in control over their situation. Many studies, most of which focused on health-related online groups, have indicated that online social support can provide great benefits to group members (e.g., Grandinetti, 2000; Wright, 1999).
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Wright (1999) found that satisfaction with on-line support relationship, along with face-to-face supportive relationships, was positively correlated with the degree of reduction in perceived life stress. In another study, Wright (2002) reported a moderate negative linear relationship between perceived life stress and perceptions of emotional support obtained from on-line groups among online cancer community participants. Grandinetti (2000) found that online support groups can be even more helpful than physicians in terms of convenience, emotional support, cost effectiveness and in-depth information. In recent years, many online social groups have been established among Chinese international students. Some of them have been developed for Chinese students in a local area or at particular university (e.g., BBS developed by Chinese student associations at different American
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universities); others are developed for nation-wide Chinese international students or Chinese immigrants (e.g., bbs.mit.edu, . A key feature of these online groups for international students has been the ability of members who share similar experiences (e.g., adapting to the new teaching system; dealing with ethnic stereotypes) to offer or receive understanding and to help each other. For instance, bulletin boards can be an invaluable resource for international students. A message board enables international students to communicate with each other, to raise and address specific questions and concerns, and to increase a sense of community (Murphy, Hawkes, & Law, 2002).
Little research attention so far has been focused on the role of these online ethnic social groups in the acculturation process of international students. Thus, a research question is posed to explore whether there are any connections between acculturative stress and use of online social support, as well as the types of support that these online groups may offer:
RQ1. Is there any relation between acculturative stress and level of activity in online ethnic social groups for Chinese students? RQ2. Is there any relation between acculturative stress and students’ perceived emotional or informational support from online ethnic social groups.
Salem et al. (1997) claimed that online mutual help may provide a unique form of support for those individuals who are not as likely to use traditional forms of help. This statement is consistent with Papacharissi and Rubin’s (2000) finding that those who felt less satisfied and valued in face-to-face communication used the Internet as an alternative to interpersonal communication. Turner et al.’s (2001) examination of the complementary nature of face-to-face and computer-mediated social support indicated that respondents were more likely to participate
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within an online community only when they perceived that the depth and support received from the online community was high, and when the depth and support received from the specific individuals in their life was low. Therefore, the following hypotheses are proposed: H2. Students who are less satisfied with their interpersonal social support networks will be more active in online ethnic social groups than will those who are more satisfied with their interpersonal social support networks. H3. Students who are less satisfied with their interpersonal social support networks will perceive higher level of informational and emotional support from online ethnic social groups than will those who are more satisfied with their interpersonal social support networks.
Method
Participants A total of 112 Chinese international students (52 males, 60 females) at two large, diverse universities in the southeastern United States completed questionnaires about their feelings about life in the U.S., their social support and use of the Internet. They reported over 30 different majors. The participants ranged from 21 to 44 years old, with an average age of 29.4 years. Of the participants, 83 (75.5%) were married, 27 (24.5%) were single. They had lived in the U.S. for an average of 2.7 years (range: 3 months to 8.5 years), and had studied in the U.S for an average 2.6 years (range: 1 month to 8.5 years).
They spent an average of 2.51 hours per week (SD=3.81) contacting their families and friends in China through different channels that included emails, letters and telephone. Over one third (34%) of the participants reported they did not have family members in the U. S., while the other 66% reported they had some family members in the U.S.
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When asked whether they have ever used online ethnic social groups, 75% of the participants (N=84) said that they had used one or more such social groups, while only 25% (N=28) had never used any of these groups. Procedures The participants were recruited through the Chinese Student Association, the International Office and several academic departments at the two universities. The data collection lasted for one month. The students were given the opportunity to complete the questionnaire at home so they would have enough time to provide complete answers. Measures Demographics. This section of the questionnaire included items measuring the participants’ gender, age, nationality, marital status, and length of residence and education in the United States. They were asked whether they had any family members in the United States. If yes, they needed to indicate the number of family members and who they were (e.g., parents, spouse, siblings).
In addition, they also reported how many hours per week they spent contacting their family and friends in China. Life satisfaction. Overall life satisfaction was measured with two items: satisfaction with academic study (“Generally, how satisfied are you with your academic pursuit in the United States?”) and satisfaction with social life (“Generally, how satisfied are you with your social life in the United States?”).
Responses were scored on a 5-point Likert-type scale, ranging from 1 (very dissatisfied) to 5 (very satisfied).
The two items were significantly correlated with each other (r = .38, p