Probe Into Factors Influencing Reverse Culture Shock Among Chinese Return Students

More and more Chinese students overseas are coming back home foremployment against the backdrop of the rising of international status of China and its fasteconomic development. As such, the phenomenon provides the basis for this study.Research on "Returnees" has gradually become an important area of interculturalcommunication studies in recent years. Many return students would go through are-adaptation process in the home culture after being exposed to the host culture andgetting overseas education for a substantial period of time. The process by whichindividual readjust themselves is called” reverse culture shock”. It’s originated from thenotion of culture shock and can be interpreted as a continuation of intercultural adaptationprocess.The early reseach can be traced back to Scheuts in1944when he studied reentryprocess of return American soldiers. By combining qualitative and quantitative methods,the thesis sets out to analyze factors that influence the formation of reverse culture shock inreturn Chinese students. Altogether100valid questionnares were collected for quantitativeanalysis via multiple regression analysis. The following conclusion are reached: Thesymptoms of reverse culture shock is quite prevalent among sampled population, about29%exhibits severe reverse culture shock. Female respondents are more prone to reverseculture shock than their male counterparts. Multiple regression analyse shows that homeculture identity is the most prominent influencing factor of reverse culture shock, the less arespondent identifies with home culture, the more likely the formation of reverse cultureshock. In the sampled male population, foreign language proficiency is another prominentfactor in addition to home culture identity for males, the more proficient a male respondentis at the foreign language, the more likely he is going to develop reverse culture shock.Preparedness to return, a factor long being held as a prominent one, proved to be onlyapplicable to the25-30age group. The qualitative interview suggests reverse culture shockis mostly likely to occur within the first half year of return, good social support helpsprevent reverse culture shock from happening.