The Acculturative Stress Experience of International Students

This is a longitudinal work aiming to ascertain the influence of ethnic identity, daily hassles, social network, coping strategies, English language proficiency, self rating of health and demographic variables on levels of acculturative stress and overall distress experienced by international students. Students from China and Indonesia completed measures on the above constructs at the entry level and four and eight months after entering Australia and University. A similar group of Local Australian students was recruited to participate for comparison purposes. This study supported the stress and coping model, confirming that sojourners experienced moderate to high levels of stress from their initial interaction with the host society. These findings refuted the traditional U-curve assumption of culture shock which argues that sojourners go through honeymoon, depression and readjustment phases of adjustment. Overall, high daily hassles and acculturative stress were the strongest predictors of high levels of distress. Higher avoidance and self-blame coping strategies were strong predictors of high distress across the three waves of assessment.