A Study Verifying Lily A. Arasaratnam’s New Instrument Of Intercultural Communication Competence (ICC) At Japanese Cultural Background

Countries are becoming increasingly inter-dependent. Individuals are becomingglobal citizen. However, everyone has his/her own cultural background, one person’sIntercultural Communication Competence plays an important role in the task tounderstand and accept people from other races, cultural background, or socialenvironment. Therefore, it is of great importance to find out a good instrument tomeasure Intercultural Communication Competence. The present study has threeresearch objectives. First, it aims at testing Intercultural Communication Competenceof people who are experiencing intercultural communication with Lily A.Arasaratnam’s instrument of Intercultural Communication Competence in a differentculture background. Second, verify the validity and reliability of questionnaire. Third,it aims at finding out the item bias in the instrument through testing as well.The subjects were120international students in Nagoya University in Japan.Based on the Intercultural Communication Competence instrument designed by LilyA. Arasaratnam in2009, the researcher investigated the status quo of the subjects’Intercultural Communication Competence. The reliability and validity of InteractionInvolvement Scale, Ethnocentrism Scale, and Intercultural CommunicationMotivation Scale and Intercultural Communication Competence Scale is verifiedthrough SPSS17.0by the researcher. Furthermore, international students wererequired to report item bias of the scales during the interviews.Running the collected data with SPSS17.0, factor analysis and reliability analysiswere processed to test the validity and reliability of the questionnaire. Descriptiveanalysis was used to demonstrate international students’ Intercultural CommunicationCompetence and related factors of Intercultural Communication Competence. Itembiases were found out during the interview of the subjects. Major research findings include:1) Lily A. Arasaratnam’s InterculturalCommunication Competence instrument is effective in the testing of internationalstudents’ ICC and related factors in Japanese culture backgrounds.2) Thequestionnaire in Lily A. Arasaratnam’s instrument iseliable and valid.3) Several itembiases exist in the scales of Lily A. Arasaratnam’s Intercultural CommunicationCompetence instrument. Through analyzing, the item biases were corrected.The research result of this study implicates that a mature instrument ofIntercultural Communication Competence need several times of testing to becomplete. Through the verifying of the instrument, item bias will be reported. Afterthe analyzing and revising of the item bias, the instrument will be further developedand researches about Intercultural Communication Competence which will use abetter instrument could be more accurate and effective.