In order to find out how widespread church participation is among Chinese students in the UK and its influence on their intercultural interaction and cross-cultural adaptation, a survey was employed in the study, which is widely the case in data collection, especially in the social sciences. By making a comparison with non-church participants, the results from analysing the survey data may contribute to addressing questions regarding the influence of church participation in a general sense, and to identifying other potential relations.
Construction of the Survey
The questionnaire in the present study contained five sections (see Appendix 1). The first was an introduction to the questionnaire, which illustrated the goals and significance of the study, participants’ rights, and instructions on how to answer the questions. The next section collected demographic and other information about participants, including gender, length of stay in the UK, and degree specialisations. The third section was concerned with psychological adaptation and experience. The fourth section focused on the church experience, and the last section was about the socio-cultural experience.
Independent Variables
The independent variables in the study included the participants’ basic information, such as gender, age, majors, and the period of time that participants have been in the host country. They were not only demographic measures for understanding the students’ general
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situation but also key factors that influence cross-cultural adaptation, as has demonstrated by previous researches (Sim and Schraeder, 2004).
Other independent variables included participants’ experience in local churches, such as their religious beliefs, number of times of going to the churches, types of churches they attend, and reasons for their church participation. This was recorded with participants’ responses to the items ‘Have you been to church since you came to the UK?’ and ‘How many times have you been to church in the last six months (Ward et al., 1998)?’ There were automatically two separate answers to the first item: ‘have been to’ and ‘have not been to’. As for the second item, there were four answers: ‘once-twice’, ‘three-four times’, ‘five-six times’, and ‘seven-eight times’.
Dependent Variables
The dependent variables were divided into two sections based on the dimensions of cross-cultural adaptation that Ward and Kennedy proposed (1999), that is, social cultural adaptation and psychological adaptation. The socio-cultural adaptation scale in the study was adopted from the Revised Sociocultural Adaptation (SCAS-R). As a unidimensional measure, the scale has demonstrated good reliability and validity with a wide variety of cross-cultural samples. According to Ward and Kennedy, the socio-cultural adaptation scale (SCAS) is a flexible instrument and can be easily modified based on the characteristics of the sojourning sample. There are many versions of the scale, which have been applied in a variety of studies. This research used the Revised Sociocultural Adaptation (SCAS-R) version. The SCAS-R is suitable for a study with international students as it consists of five subscales, namely: interpersonal communication, academic performance, personal interests and community involvement, ecological adaptation, and language proficiency. These different sub-scales also constitute the factors for analysis. For instance, in the Appendix 1, Questions 21, 23, 26, 31, 33, 36 and 41 refer to outcomes of interpersonal relationships; Questions 30 and 40 refer to language competency; Question 12, 27, 32 and 37 refer to academic experience. Question 25, 29, 35 and 39 refer to
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ecological adaptation; Question 24, 28, 34 and 38 refer to personal interests and community involvement.
The Psychological Adaptation Scale assesses psychological adaptation. The scale was adopted from the Brief Psychological Adaptation Scale, which was non-general but specific to cultural relocation. The validity and reliability of the scale have been tested and item-total correlations are high (αBPAS = .79). There were eight items concerning participants’ psychological feelings about life in the UK, including positive and negative feelings, and feelings related to the home and to the host country. Through responding on a scale ranging from 1 = never to 7 = always, participants can demonstrate their feelings in different situations.
Translation of the Survey
As subjects in the study were Chinese students, I translated the questionnaire into Chinese so that they could understand it well and give accurate answers. The Chinese version (see Appendix 2) also raised their interest in doing the survey as most other surveys they had encountered in the UK were in English. In order to ensure the quality of translation and so that it exactly reflected the meaning in English, a professor who was specialised in translation in both languages was asked to revise it.
Administration of the Survey
Quantitative research relies on numerical data (Onwuegbuzie and Teddlie, 2003). To ensure the collection of completed questionnaires and to cover as many Chinese students as possible, the survey was distributed around the university campus randomly. Students were invited to fill in the survey and by submitting their responses they were implicitly agreeing to take part voluntarily in the project.
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Participants in the Survey
508 Chinese students took part in the survey, seven of whose questionnaires were discarded, as they were incomplete. Of the remaining 501 questionnaires, 384 of the student respondents were female (accounting for 76.6% of the overall total) and 117 were male (23.4%). All the participants in the survey’s sample population were pursuing a Master’s degree in the same selected, established UK university. The majority of respondents in the sample came from the Business School (83.2%), followed by 5.8% from the School of Social Media and 5.4% from the School of Education. There were fewer students representing other subjects such as Engineering, Law, Sociology, and Medical Science. In terms of the length of time that students had been in the new city, 97.6% of them had been living there over six months, the others less than six months. 84.8% of the participants in the sample were of no religion (N=421), with a total number of 64 with religious beliefs. Among these, 46 students identified as Buddhist, 14 were Christians, and four were Muslims. All of them had their faith before they came to the UK.
The total adaptation includes social-cultural adaptation and psychological adaptation as shown in Table 4-2. The full score of psychological adaptation for one participant is 56 and for social-cultural adaptation is 100, and the total adaptation is 156. Therefore, the average level of total adaptation 101.996/156=65%, which has reached a medium level, within which, the social-cultural adaptation reached the level of 64% (63.65/100), and the average psychological adaptation reached 68% (38.33/56). Generally, Chinese students had a medium level of adaptation but the personal difference varied widely.
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N. Minimum Maximum Mean Std. Deviation
Psychological Adaptation 501 16.00 56.00 38.3393 5.70514 Social-cultural Adaptation 501 34.00 91.00 63.6567 9.11734 Cross-cultural Adaptation 501 57.00 144.00 101.9960 12.33191
Table 4- 2 Cross-cultural Adaptations of Chinese Students
In terms of the students’ frequency of church participation and type of church, among all the subjects in the questionnaires, 178 students (35.5% of the total population) had been to church in the previous six months, that is, over a third of Chinese students in the survey sample had had a church experience. Among these church participants, 62.4% (N=111) had been to church once or twice, and about 37.6% (N=67) had been three or more times. In terms of the typology of churches, 163 students had been to local Christian churches, 26 students had been to Chinese Christian churches, and 8 had been to non-Christian churches. 19 students had been to more than one type of church, which indicates that there was no fixed selection of church for some Chinese students. They were free to choose whether or not to attend the church and which kind of church.