Initial Development Of A Scale To Measure University Students’ Intercultural Exposure Experiences

With the acceleration of globalization and internationalization of education,Chinese universities are attaching more and more importance to developing talents with patriotic sentiment and intercultural competence.Intercultural competence,the ability to interact effectively and appropriately with individuals from other cultures,can be developed in many paths.However,it is essential to experience different cultures while enhancing Chinese cultural identity,whether it is an indirect contact experience or a direct interactive one.There are relatively few interactive experiences in the context of EFL in China,while exposure experiences are more prevalent.Previous research has found that exposure experiences also have a positive effect on the development of intercultural competence,so this study focuses on exposure experiences.However,existing literature lacks a scale to measure intercultural exposure experience.This study attempts to develop a scale for measuring intercultural exposure experiences for Chinese university students from a bottom-up approach,in order to lay a foundation for later studies on the impact of exposure experiences on intercultural competence development.In reference to previous research literature,this study explored the paths of intercultural exposure experiences of university students from a bottom up approach based on interviews with15 university students.5 themes and 28 descriptive items of intercultural exposure experience were obtained after coding the transcriptions and then the framework and questionnaire items of an initial scale of intercultural exposure experiences of university students were constructed.Then,two sample（N₁=352;N₂=352）data were analyzed to determine the scale structure and validate the scale through EFA（exploratory factor analysis）and CFA（confirmatory factor analysis）respectively.The results showed that the scale of intercultural exposure experiences of university students contained five dimensions:Cultural Products Contact,Language Learning Contact,Activity Participation Contact,Media Contact,and Going Abroad-related Contact with a total of 23 items.The results of data analysis also indicates that all the indexes of the scale meet the psychometric requirements,having satisfactory reliability and validity,and can be used as a instrument to measure intercultural exposure experiences of university students,which has potential practical value.The significance of this study involves:（1）At the theoretical level,focusing on the value of intercultural exposure experiences,the scale of intercultural exposure experiences of university students was developed based on the bountiful first-hand intercultural exposure experiences of university students,and the foundation is laid for future systematic study on the mechanism of the effect of intercultural experiences on intercultural competence.（2）At the practical level,the developed scale of intercultural exposure experiences of university students provides teachers with a reference for understanding the intercultural exposure pathways of university students,thus providing insights into students’intercultural exposure and effectively implementing intercultural competence instruction.