In current research on intercultural contact, the term adaptation is sometimes used inter-changeably with acculturation and adjustment, which necessitates a preliminary explanation ineach new study as to which term and definition will be adopted (Ward, 1990). This study adoptsthe definition of adaptation as stated by Kim (1986): “the process that people go through whentrying to adjust to the differences they encounter in new cultural environments, thus becomingbetter suited for dealing with the extant challenges confronted in unfamiliar environments”.Some prominent scholars, including Berry & Sam (1997), use the term ‘acculturation’ to refer tothe process of making changes in response to cultural stimuli, and ‘adaptation’ as the outcome ofthe process of cultural change. For the sake of simplicity, this study will use of the term ‘adapta-tion’ to refer both to the process and to the outcome of changes made in response to encounterswith cultural difference.
The ongoing process of adaptation can certainly be said to have a range of levels ofprogress, and sojourners can be found to be at higher or lower stages of adaptation. There arealso different types of adaptation which have been identified by scholars; the types which thecurrent study is concerned with are psychological adaptation, sociocultural adaptation, and acad-emic adaptation (Searle & Ward, 1990; Ward & Kennedy, 1994; Ward & Rana-Deuba, 1999, Za-yacova, Lynch and Espenshade, 2005). The types of adaptation and the levels of success of adap-tation are the focus of numerous measures and scales, including those which were used in thisstudy (see Chapter 3.3.2, 3.3.7b, and 3.3.7c; Zayacova, Lynch and Espenshade, 2005; Demes andGeeraert, 2014). Furthermore, there are a number of models which integrate the various types ofadaptation, and the approaches which exist for studying them. This study refers to the ABC mod-el, developed by Furnham, Bochner, and Ward (2001).
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Chapter 3: Methodology ................................20
3.1 Participants ............................20
3.2 Research Design ................................21
Chapter 4: Results ................................35
4.1 Demographics ........................35
4.1.1 Nationalities and Cultural Regions ................35
4.1.2. Universities represented in the study ..................35
Chapter 5: Conclusion ...............53
5.1 Summary of Findings .......................53
5.1.1 Towards an Updated ABC Model ..............54
5.2 Implications .........................56
Chapter 4: Results
4.1 Demographics
4.1.1 Nationalities and Cultural Regions
The students surveyed in this study and their reported friends represented 65 countriesaround the world. The largest percentage of the international students surveyed for this studywere from Southeast Asian countries, especially Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand (the majority ofthese students were located at Guangxi University for Nationalities). The next largest group ofinternational student participants was from former “eastern bloc” countries that had been underthe governance of the Soviet Union, such as Russia, the Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Azer-baijan, as well as count
