International Students' Self-determined Motivation To Study In China And Their Psychological Well-being

The growth of students' international mobility for study purposes provides intellectual and personal enrichment and offers a lot of positive experiences.But the confrontation with a foreign culture and educational system can sometimes lead to adaptation problems with negative psychological and physical symptoms.Therefore,sojourners face difficulties to maintain sociocultural and psychological well-being.In line with this,the present study was conducted in China,Hubei province,Wuhan intended to determine the role of self-determined motivation on the psychological well-being of international students in China.Besides,the mediating effect of sociocultural adaptation in the relationship between self-determined motivation and psychological well-being was examined.For this purpose,a sample of(N=400)randomly selected international students from four universities in Wuhan were recruited.In this quantitative study,a questionnaire of three scales was distributed among participants:1)Self-Regulation Questionnaire-Academic(SRQ-A),2)Sociocultural Adaptation Scale-Revised(SCAS-R),and 3)The Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale(WEMWBS).Multiple regressions were executed to figure out the predicting effect of self-determined motivation on psychological well-being and sociocultural adaptation as well as the predicting effect of sociocultural adaptation on psychological well-being.A regression analysis with PROCESS macro was also carried out to test the mediating effect of sociocultural adaptation on the relationship between self-determined motivation and psychological well-being.Moreover,an independent samples T-test and ANOVA were used to figure out the effect of previous travel experience and gender on sociocultural adaptation,respectively.The findings of this study revealed that self-determined motivation can positively predict both psychological well-being and sociocultural adaptation.Sociocultural adaptation regressed positively on psychological well-being.More interestingly,sociocultural adaptation meditated the relationship between self-determined motivation and psychological well-being.Students with previous travel experience were found to have a better sociocultural adaptation than those who didn't have any experience.Gender was also found to make no significant difference in the sociocultural adaptation of sojourners,except for language proficiency,where males significantly did better than females.This study is expected to contribute a lot to the theoretical knowledge of experts in the area of internationalizing education,students' mobility,and adjustment difficulties among students studying overseas.The findings of the study may also practically play a great role in strengthening the practice of the international educational system in a safe environment with a magnificent advantage both for sojourners and the host countries.