Cultural And Gender Differences In Perceptions Of Stressors And Coping Skills: A Cross-cultural Investigation Of African, Japanese, And Western Students In Chinese Universities

Stress is surrounding students on a daily basis, particularly overseas students. Today's gradates of higher education face an international multicultural world. Many learners studying abroad in China or elsewhere experience some degree of stress and cultural shock. In addition to confronting problems of adjustment to a new college life, the financial, emotional independence from the family and accepting a new set of social values will be new tasks for the students studying abroad. Students are entering an experience which will offer all kinds of challenges and opportunities for growth. The process of struggling to adapt to these huge problematic situations in new socio-cultural environment demands effective strategies for coping. The students have to seek new methods to manage the stresses they are exposed to.There is a need to clarify the nature of stress the students have to withstand and the differences that exist in their perceiving and reacting to these stressors. Measurement of a broad base of coping skills that discover more individual and cultural diversities in the process of coping is needed to clarify predictive associations among variables in order to plan interventions that optimize adaptive outcomes among students studying abroad. More specifically, information is needed to formulate cross-training programs for students to prevent ineffective coping and stress-related illnesses and to maintain health while studying abroad. Educationists, school administrators, foreign affair's offices, and mental health counselling centres need specific information concerning the cultural and individual differences in stress and coping. Such information can be secured only through providing data by comparing peoples of different countries on issues such as coping strategies, and reaction to stressors.Based on such claims, this research was designed to collect stress and coping information from African, Japanese, and Western overseas college students in China in order to test the universal nature of stress and coping behaviour among them. In addition, the research was also aimed to provide basic information towards understanding the problems that result from stress and coping which can best be defined in cultural terms. More specifically, this research focuses on differences in the magnitude of perceived stress and the level of coping skills practiced by the three cultural groups in order to cope with stressful situations in Chinese Universities. Accordingly, the primary research problem was stated as follows: "do the overseas college students in China perceive and react to the different cultural and academic stressors in the same way? In other words, do the perceptions of stressors and coping skills of overseas Chinese college students differ when gender and culture factors are considered?" Built on this research problem the researcher's central hypothesis in this study was that commonly studied stressors and coping strategies reflect considerable dispositional differences within gender and cultural groups.The current research is important for the fact that the findings could be of great value in improving the adjustment and performance of overseas college students in China. The research is important in that the findings may provide important information for planning intervention strategies to better prepare overseas college students for study in China -thereby increasing their potential for success.The research samples were chosen from population of African students (non-Arab nations), Japanese students, and white Western students (North Americans, English speaking Europeans, Australians, and New Zealanders) studying in Chinese colleges. The data was collected from eleven universities in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. Individual subjects were matched in many respects according to the research goals. From the entire population the research samples were identified and matched in accordance with class, university type, living conditions, stayed period in China, number of visits to China, and age. Th...