ACCULTURATIVE STRESS AND MENTAL HEALTH AMONG INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS: AN EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE

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1 International Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Technology (IJMET) Volume 9, Issue 5, May 2018, pp , Article ID: IJMET_09_05_086 Available online at ISSN Print: and ISSN Online: IAEME Publication Scopus Indexed ACCULTURATIVE STRESS AND MENTAL HEALTH AMONG INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS: AN EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE Feba Thomas Research Scholar, VIT Business School, VIT, Vellore, Tamilnadu, India Dr. Sumathi G.N Associate Professor, VIT Business School, VIT, Vellore, Tamilnadu, India ABSTRACT The study examined various factors that contribute to acculturative stress among the international students. The study addresses and the mental health issues faced by international students. A sample of about 270 international students was considered for the study. A survey method was used to collect data using a questionnaire and the scales were adapted from existing studies. The data were analyzed using structural equation modeling using partial least square method. The findings indicated that the international students face acculturative stress and a majority of them face psychological distress. The seven factors of acculturative stress were found to have a positive significant relationship with poor mental health. The study outcomes indicated the necessity of giving proper counseling to international students in order to reduce the acculturative stress that they face when they are in a new geographical area. Keywords: Acculturative stress, International students, Mental Health, Psychological distress Cite this Article: Feba Thomas and Dr. Sumathi G.N, Acculturative Stress and Mental Health among International Students: An Empirical Evidence, International Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Technology, 9(5), 2018, pp INTRODUCTION Acculturative stress had been a critical issue that international students encounter when they transit from their home country to host country for study purpose. It is defined as a culture shock, the term actually coined by Chicago s Institute of International Education (1951).It was found among students who come for a short span of time (2 years) to another country for their studies. International students faced issues like language problems, discrimination, unable to adjust to new food habits, cultural differences, and climate change (Zhai, 2002). Among the acculturation modes, marginalization and separation were related with higher levels of acculturative stress integration was associated with low level of stress and separation editor@iaeme.com

2 Feba Thomas and Dr. Sumathi G.N was associated with an intermediate stress level (Berry et al., 1987). Studies have reported that these differences affect the mental health of the students. According to WHO(World Health Organization), 2001, mental health is defined as a state of well-being in which every individual realizes his or her own potential, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to her or his community. Studies have reported that in addition to mental health, even the student s academic performance was also affected. When students lack support from their parents and friends they end up facing stress even due to lower adjustment levels affecting their academic life. In addition, the environment created stress which includes urban diversity and climate. Research showed that about 70% of the international students in universities face homesickness when they have to stay miles apart from the home (Thurber, 2012). The international students undergo a lot of problems and challenges like homesickness (Kegel, 2009), adjustment issues, depression (Gomez, 2011) and cultural shock. Therefore, this study examines the impact of acculturative stress on the mental health of international students. 2. REVIEW OF LITERATURE AND HYPOTHESES DEVELOPMENT Studies have reported acculturative stress among international students, its predictors (Bai,2016) mental health problems and poor health quality of life(bhandari et al, 2012) due to acculturative stress (Mehta, 1998). The international students reported more amount of mental health issues than domestic students and also had adjustment issues(forbes & Sawyer, 2016).They reported about facing emotional or stress-related issues that affected their academic performance. On the other hand, counseling services available on campus and offcampus helped them in acquiring mental health services(hyun, et al, 2001). The Canadian medical students faced mental health, psychological distress like depression, professional burnout, and anxiety that had an impact on the academic performance, professional development of the students and the dropout rate (Dyrbye, Thomas, & Shanafelt, 2006). Berry (2005) reported the individuals who go through acculturation process should have intercultural contact with the other individuals and undergo four stages of acculturation process including assimilation, marginalization, separation, and Integration. The changes in acculturation led to increase in the psychological distress (Amer, 2005). While acculturative stress mediated the relationship between acculturation and the psychosocial functioning among Cuban American college students (Wang, et al, 2010). Acculturative stress is defined as a reduction in health status of individuals who have to struggle to adapt to a new culture psychologically and socially (Berry, 1987). Previous studies have reported that various factors affected the acculturative stress. The socio-demographic variables such as education status, the subject of study, the continent of origin, age, gender, marital status, sources of financial support, coping styles were related to the level of acculturative stress among international students. Social support, English fluency, satisfaction and social connectedness were also found to predict acculturative stress among international students from Europe. These students had comparatively less stress compared to the students from other countries (Yeh and Inose, 2003). The length of time moderated the relationship between acculturative stress and depression (Wei et al., 2007). Students faced psychological distress when they don t adapt to the host country s culture due to discrimination (Driscoll and Torres, 2013), acculturative stress and cultural resources(ethnic identity, religious coping and religious support (Ahmed, et al., 2011) that leads to poor academic performance among Australian University students where resilience helps to reduce distress (McGillivray and Pidgeon, 2015). They also face difficulties when the length of stay is more than three years and also experience mental health symptoms like depression, anxiety, social alienation. Mexican international students in the United States reported depressive symptoms (Cano, et editor@iaeme.com

3 Acculturative Stress and Mental Health among International Students: An Empirical Evidence al., 2014). International students in Australia faced stress and strain because of new academic practices (Forbes and Sawyer, 2011) Acculturative Stress and Mental Health It has been observed that International students reported highest amount of mental health problems than other domestic students in the host country (Forbes, 2011). The Chinese international college students reported mental health problems in the United States. This study helped the faculties, staffs to be more collaborative among the students that helped to improve the mental health of international students (Liu, 2009) while international students in China, Korea, and Japan adopted various coping mechanisms to reduce the stress that they face (Kim, et al., 1997). Similar kind of results were observed among Korean international students studying in the United States where the students acculturative stress were showing a positive relationship with depression and a negative relation with self-esteem (Park, 2009). Moreover, immigrant adolescents reported acculturative stress and mental health symptoms (Sirin et al., 2013). On the same lines, the international students in the United Kingdom also faced various challenges and mental health problems among which acculturative stress was an important challenge (Saad, 2015). Australian students faced psychological distress due to problems in accommodation, social support, financial position and discrimination while the dysfunctional coping mechanism contributed to psychological distress to a large extent (Khawaja and Dempsey, 2007). In the case of Latino students, mental health moderately mediated the relationship between perceived discrimination and the acculturative stress (Driscoll and Torres, 2013). The Chinese international students faced issues with anxiety and depression. The students faced these issues because of their poor relationships, poor health, low exercise regime and overall faced mental health issues (Han, 2013). The Asian Americans faced levels of acculturative stress and also mental health issues in United States. The poor mental health has certain outcomes like clinical and psychological distress. If the individual identified their acculturation level, they could help in the reduction in the risk associated with mental health. Depression and anxiety were observed as the main issue among mental health problems among the international students. The African American college students also reported psychological distress and their help-seeking intentions were linked with the behaviors (Mesidor and Sly, 2014). Nepal students reported a reduction in health-related quality of life due to acculturative stress (Bhandari et al., 2012). Psychological distress was one of the predictor for mental health. The students with psychological distress generally seeked mental health services. The international students faced culture shock which had an impact on the mental health status. The students in New York reported about 75 percent of them faced depression, whereas the rest 25 percent of them had suicidal thoughts. The study focused on the relation of mental health and acculturative stress among Latino students with the mental health issues that comprised of depression, anxiety (Albeg, 2013). Based on the above discussion, it is proposed that acculturative stress will impact the mental health among of international students. H1: Acculturative stress will lead to poor mental health among the international students. 3. METHOD 3.1. Research Design The study followed a descriptive research design. Purposive sampling design was used to select the respondents. An online questionnaire was used to collect data from international students. There were 270 responses received from 389 requests sent to the international editor@iaeme.com

4 Feba Thomas and Dr. Sumathi G.N students. An international student is an individual who temporarily resides in a foreign place for activities such as work and education (Gullekson& Vancouver, 2010). Participants profile Table 1 represented the demographic profile. The respondents included male and female students with a sample size of (n=270) from two private universities in South India. Almost 55.2 percent of the sample consisted of female international student s with male of 44.8 percent. Among the international students, this study had a major part of undergraduate students (53.3%) compared to the postgraduate students (46.7%). The selected international students hailed from the countries of Nepal (35.6%), Iran (10%), Rwanda (10.4%), DR Congo (10.4%), Cameroon (10.4%), Somalia (10%), Bangladesh (10%), South Korea (0.7%), and Turkey (2.6%). Majority of them were in the age group of years as they were pursuing programmes like B.Com and B.Tech. Majority of them stayed in the host country for their studies for a duration of 3-4 years. The other categories of the demographic profile represented that the majority of them are pursuing undergraduate courses and the rest post graduate courses. The participants (international students) were given the questionnaire in English language. The Chinese international students had difficulty in understanding English and they translated to Chinese words using translators in order to understand the difficult English words. Table 1Demographic profile of the respondents Demographic Variables Categories International students (n=270) % Gender Male Female Age (years) Native Country Currently Pursuing Degree Nepal Iran Rwanda DR Congo Cameroon Somalia Bangladesh South Korea Turkey UG PG Length of Stay (years) and above * UG (Undergraduate); PG (Post Graduate) Instruments Acculturative Stress Scale for International students The acculturative stress scale developed by Sandhu and Aarabadi (1994) was used to measure acculturative stress among the international students. This scale was designed to assess acculturative stress that an individual experiences personally. The scale consisted of 36 items measured on a 5 point Likert scale 1= strongly disagree, 2= disagree, 3= not sure, 4 = agree, 5 = strongly agree. It consisted of 7 dimensions perceived discrimination, homesickness, perceived hate items, fear items, stress due to change/culture shock items, guilt, and miscellaneous. A sample item was Homesickness for my country bothers me. The Cronbach s α for acculturative stress, the scale was editor@iaeme.com

5 Acculturative Stress and Mental Health among International Students: An Empirical Evidence Mental Health The mental health scale developed by Keyes(2005) was used to measure the mental health status of individuals on a 14 item scale, that were responded on a 6 point scale which ranges from never to every day. A sample item was that you had experiences that challenged you to grow and become a better person. The Cronbach s α for mental health, the scale was Data Analysis The validity of the measurement model was tested using the guidelines provided by (Straub et al., 2004). The study used PLS (Partial Least Square) to conduct the analysis. PLS allows conducting analysis with smaller sample size. The other tools used for analyzing data included descriptive statistics, correlation analysis using SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) ver. 22. PLS was considered as one of the best approach when it is to test the latent variables in the (SEM) Structural Equation Modeling (Hair et al., 2011). The current study used Smart PLS M2 Version and bootstrapping resampling method. The procedure ensured generating 5000 subsamples of cases randomly selected and it was replaced from the original data (Hair et al., 2011). The parameter estimates were estimated using the bootstrapping technique recommended by (Henseler et al., 2009). The reason for using bootstrapping procedure in PLS-SEM was to ensure the data to be non-normally distributed (Hair et al., 2011). 4. RESULTS The present study investigated the relationship between the acculturative stress and mental health. The results indicated that the acculturative stress of the international students affects the mental health of international students. The seven factors of acculturative stress include discrimination, homesickness, guilt, perceived hate, fear, culture shock, and miscellaneous. The total mean score for acculturative stress scale was 2.79 and SD (standard deviation) was The total mean score for mental health was 3.44, and SD was Table 2 represented the descriptive statistics of the variables included in the study. Among the Acculturative stress factors (discrimination, homesickness, guilt, perceived hate, fear, culture shock, and miscellaneous) homesickness had the highest mean score (3.29) followed by culture shock (3.01) Assessment of the Reflective Model Reliability Analysis Table 2 Descriptive Statistics, Cronbach s alpha, and correlation matrix Discrimination 1 Homesickness.72** 1 Hate.39**.73** 1 Fear.49**.64**.69** 1 Shock.82**.77**.75**.63** 1 Guilt.29**.31**.42**.60**.38** 1 Miscellaneous.60**.71**.69**.83**.73**.74** 1 Acculturative Stress.82**.86**.78**.82**.91**.60**.91** 1 Mental Health -.55** -.75** -.44** -.45** -.68** -.18** -.60** -.66** 1 Mean SD Cronbach s apha ** Correlation is significant at the 0.1 level (2-tailed), SD = standard deviation editor@iaeme.com

6 Feba Thomas and Dr. Sumathi G.N The item consistency was assessed based on the Cronbach s Alpha values. The composite reliability and the Cronbach s alpha were used for testing the internal consistency of the measurement model. The composite reliability was exceeded in all the constructs. The composite reliability was higher than.80 which was considered as good confirmatory research. Table 3 AVE and Composite Reliability Variables AVE CR Acculturative Stress Mental Health AVE -Average Variance Extracted; CR- Composite Reliability The internal consistency and the reliability of the two variables acculturative stress and mental health are meeting the threshold value. The composite reliability value was greater than.80, which was considered as a good confirmatory research (Daskalakis & Mantas, 2008). Average Variance Extracted (AVE) values were above 0.50 greater than the threshold value and had passed the convergent validity criteria (Fornell and Larcker, 1981). The AVE for acculturative stress and mental health were above the threshold value (Hock and Ringle, 2006). Table 4 Discriminant Validity (Fornell-larker criterion) Variables Acculturative Stress Mental Health Acculturative Stress.82 Mental Health In the Table 4, the discriminant validity was established between the two reflective constructs- acculturative stress and mental health. The square root of AVE was greater than the inter-construct correlation. The discriminant validity had been established using Fornell- Larker Criteria. Figure 1 PLS Structural Assessment for Acculturative Stress and Mental Health editor@iaeme.com

7 Acculturative Stress and Mental Health among International Students: An Empirical Evidence Acculturative Stress Mental Health Table 5 Path coefficients of the structural model Original Sample (O) Sample Mean (M) Standard Error(STERR) T Statistics value (O/STERR) In Table 5 the t- statistics value of 16.50, was more than 1.96 (Chin, 1998). The path coefficient represented the overall strength found and its relationship between the two latent constructs. The path coefficient of the overall tested model of acculturative stress and mental health were significant. 5. DISCUSSION The aim of this current study was to test the path model of acculturative stress and mental health among international students. The study contributed to the current literature on acculturative stress. The results of the study revealed that the international students who come to the host country for their studies faced acculturative stress at a high level and the thereby having an effect on their mental health. Theory of acculturation (Berry, 1997) students underwent four strategies of acculturation comprising of assimilation, integration, marginalization and separation. They faced stress when they cannot cope with the stress which will deal with the psychological difficulties. Results of the previous studies indicated that the international students faced various challenges that result in acculturative stress and also caused poor mental health (Saad, 2015). In this current study, one of the main contributions was that we have strengthened the existing literature available on acculturative stress and mental health with regards to international students. The acculturative stress leads to negative behaviour of the students and also the emotions that will have an effect when the students have difficulty in adjusting in a new environment. The acculturation is also been linked with the negative mental health (Cervantes 1985, Rudmin, 2009). Homesickness had the highest mean score compared to all the other factors of acculturative stress. The overall mean score for the acculturative stress (M=2.79. SD=0.89) indicated that international students were experiencing acculturative stress. Among the respondents, the female students were the majority indicating that the acculturative stress faced was currently more among female students. Bootstrapping was applied to test the significance of the path coefficient. Acculturative stress explained 48 percent variance in mental health. The coefficient of determination R 2 value was Based on the results of the current study it is evident that all the factors of acculturative stress led to mental health of the students. Among the seven factors of acculturative stress only discrimination, fear, guilt, hate and miscellaneous factors were related to mental health. Our results also explained that the other two factors homesickness and culture shock did not relate to mental health. The overall mean score for mental health (M=3.44, SD=1.23). Thus, the hypothesis H1 on acculturative stress affecting mental health among the international students has been accepted. 6. PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS AND SCOPE FOR FUTURE RESEARCH The results of the study would help the educational institutions in knowing the amount of acculturative stress that the international students face. Accordingly they can find out the measures for reducing the stress by giving proper support. The international relations office could make sure that the student s needs are met to the expectations. The international relations office in the universities could identify from the findings of the present study by editor@iaeme.com

8 Feba Thomas and Dr. Sumathi G.N making sure that the students were given all the required assistance. There should be proper care taken by the universities for the betterment of the international students by giving them proper academic and financial assistance. The university counseling centers should ensure they support international students ensuring there are functional coping resources. The institutions should make sure that the international students do not feel isolated, or they face any discomfort. This study would benefit the international relations in the educational institutions to take proper measures to reduce the acculturative stress and mental health that the international students face and thereby give them support and give them comfort and a better stay in the host country for their studies. Future research cab be carried using other variables that have links acculturative stress and mental health. Future studies could focus on role of coping strategies, social support, and acculturation in relating acculturative stress. Similarly acculturative stress can be studied in different contexts. REFERENCES [1] Ahmed, S. R., Kia-Keating, M., & Tsai, K. H. (2011). A structural model of racial discrimination, acculturative stress, and cultural resources among Arab American adolescents. American Journal of Community Psychology, 48(3-4), [2] Ahmed, S. R., Kia-Keating, M., & Tsai, K. H. (2011). A structural model of racial discrimination, acculturative stress, and cultural resources among Arab American adolescents. American Journal of Community Psychology, 48(3-4), [3] Albeg, L. J., & Castro-Olivo, S. M. (2014). The relationship between mental health, acculturative stress, and academic performance in a Latino middle school sample. Contemporary School Psychology, 18(3), [4] Amer, M. M. (2005). Arab American mental health in the post September 11 era: Acculturation, stress, and coping (Doctoral dissertation, University of Toledo). [5] Bai, J. (2016). Perceived support as a predictor of acculturative stress among international students in the United States. Journal of International Students, 6(1), 93. [6] Berry, J. W. (1997). Immigration, acculturation, and adaptation. Applied psychology, 46(1), [7] Berry, J. W. (2005). Acculturation: Living successfully in two cultures. International journal of intercultural relations, 29(6), [8] Berry, J. W., Kim, U., Minde, T., & Mok, D. (1987). Comparative studies of acculturative stress. International migration review, [9] Bhandari, P. (2012). Stress and health related quality of life of Nepalese students studying in South Korea: A cross sectional study. Health and quality of life outcomes, 10(1), 26. [10] Cano, M. Á., Castillo, L. G., Castro, Y., de Dios, M. A., & Roncancio, A. M. (2014). Acculturative stress and depressive symptomatology among Mexican and Mexican American students in the US: Examining associations with cultural incongruity and intragroup marginalization. International Journal for the Advancement of Counselling, 36(2), [11] Cervantes, R. C., & Castro, F. G. (1985). Stress, coping, and Mexican American mental health: A systematic review. Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, 7(1), [12] Driscoll, M. W., & Torres, L. (2013). Acculturative stress and Latino depression: The mediating role of behavioral and cognitive resources. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, 19(4), 373. [13] Dyrbye, L. N., Thomas, M. R., & Shanafelt, T. D. (2006). Systematic review of depression, anxiety, and other indicators of psychological distress among US and Canadian medical students. Academic Medicine, 81(4), editor@iaeme.com

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