A Study On The Relationship Among Chinese Overseas Students' Acculturation, Social Support And Life Satisfaction In Britain

The study measured Chinese overseas students in Britain, using Social Support Scale designed by Shuiyuan Xiao and Chinese Overseas Students' Acculturation and Life Satisfaction Scale developed by the author. The study aims to find out the state of Chinese overseas students' acculturation and life satisfaction, to probe into their influencing factor and their relationship, and to analyze predictable factor of life satisfaction.Chinese Overseas Students' Acculturation and Life Satisfaction Scale refers to Life Satisfaction Scale designed by Edward, a psychologist in University of Illinois in 1980, the questionnaire in Hui Chen's Ph.D. thesis Study on Foreign Students' Adaptation and Influencing Factor in Beijing and Junhong Yang's Ph.D. thesis Study on International Students' Cross-cultural Adaptation in China. It includes five dimensions: attitude to English people, academic adaptation, social communication, psychological statement and life satisfaction.The result shows that:1. In the general distribution, the percent of extremely unadaptable and extremely adaptable is few, while the percent of the unadaptable and the adaptable is higher than the medium.2. In the general distribution, the distribution of life satisfaction is in accord with that of acculturation.3. Sex, time, degree and international background impact the acculturation. Generally, girls' acculturation is better than boys'; the trend of acculturation is upward-downward-upward; with the rising degree, the acculturation is better; the students with international experience can adapt the difference between two cultures easily; working experience affects academic and the attitude to English people; the students with working experience have stronger adaptable ability.4. Social support is the influencing factor of acculturation and life satisfaction. There is remarkable difference between the students with few social support and sufficient social support and between the ones with medium and sufficient social support. There is also notable difference contrast among the three types of social support.5. Social support and acculturation can partly forecast life satisfaction; acculturation has the greatest contribution to life satisfaction.6. Social support and acculturation are the direct influencing factor of life satisfaction; social support affects life satisfaction indirectly,too.