Abstract

This study aimed to explore the determinants of acculturative stress among the chinese students in Korea. Especially, it aimed to explore how the socioeconomic characteristics of the chinese students and the language skills and social support they had affected their level of acculturative stress. The subjects of this study were 202 chinese students who were attending 5 colleges in the Seoul-Gyeonggi metropolitan area. The levels of acculturative stress was measured by the 7 sub-factors item questionnaire of perceived discrimination, homesickness, perceived hate, fear, stress due to change/cultural shock, guilt, and nonspecific factors. Also, socioeconomic characteristics, korean language skills and social support factors were introduced as predictors of acculturative stress. This study conducted descriptive statistics analyses and multiple regression analyses to explore the determinants of acculturative stress among the chinese students in Korea. Although acculturative stress of the chinese students were varied significantly according to various socioeconomic characteristics and social support factors, only social support factors, such as frequency of meeting, professors' support, fellow chinese friends' support, family members' support and economic/instrumental support and emotional/evaluation support, were still remained as statistically significant predictors to the acculturative stress in the total model. The result of this study showed us that chinese students who had meeting with others more frequently, had more supports from professors, chinese friends, and family members, and had more economic/instrumental and emotional/evaluative supports enjoyed lower level of acculturative stress than their counterparts. Therefore, more policy and program considerations should be took for chinese students to utilize their social supports in order to relive their acculturative stress in Korea. (Korean J Str Res 2011;19:183∼194)

• Keywords: Acculturative stress, Chinese students in Korea, Socioeconomic characteristics, Language skills, Social support