A Study on Factors that Influence the Cultural Adjustment Faced by the African and China Students in Higher Learning Institutions in Klang Valley
SobanaManivannan1, Lua Sharmini Satanam2
1SobanaManivannan, Faculty of Business Management, Asia Pacific University of Technology and Innovation, Malaysia.
2Lua Sharmini Satanam, Faculty of Business Management, Asia Pacific University of Technology and Innovation, Malaysia.
Manuscript received on 05 February 2019 | Revised Manuscript received on 11 February 2019 | Manuscript Published on 19 February 2019 | PP: 110-113 | Volume-7 Issue-5S January 2019 | Retrieval Number: ES2133017519/19©BEIESP
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© The Authors. Blue Eyes Intelligence Engineering and Sciences Publication (BEIESP). This is an open access article under the CC-BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
Abstract: There are numerous higher education institutions based in Malaysia successfully sustaining in the market with huge number of students from all around the world. Yet, there are a number of turnover rates where students fail to adapt the cultural differences while pursuing their studies in Malaysia. With this concern, this project aimed to identify the cultural adjustment faced by the African and China students in selected universities for the purpose of this project. Since there is only a few studies have analysed various factors that influence the cultural adjustment, this study intend to achieve the aim of the study which is to figure out the level of influence that the factors identified as independents variables such as perceived discrimination, language, social support and educational stressor towards the cultural adjustment faced by African and China students in the selected three higher learning institutions at Klang Valley, Malaysia. For this research, convenience sampling was utilized and 120 survey questionnaires were distributed to the African and China students in those universities. Then the 120 respondent’s responses were entered into SPSS version 23 one by one to collect descriptive and inferential statistics. At the beginning of the study the hypothesis formed in a way that the independent variables such as perceived discrimination and social support have correlation with cultural adjustment faced by African students but have no correlation towards the cultural adjustment faced by China student. The same thing goes to the educational stressor and language where these independent variables have correlation with the cultural adjustments faced by China students but have no correlation towards the cultural adjustment faced by African students. Meanwhile, the results revealed that perceived discrimination, language, educational stressor and social support are all have a positive relationship and have a correlation towards the cultural adjustment faced by African and China students in selected higher learning institutions. Whereby the null hypothesis formed for this study have proven wrong and the alternate hypothesis are all accepted and proven right in the data analysis made. The findings supported the results from some earlier studies and also bring out several new ideas such as African and China students do facing cultural adjustment due to the examined factors in this study. Thus, it is found that language, perceived discrimination, educational stressor and social support were positively related to the cultural adjustment faced by both African and China students. Furthermore, the results also have a great contribution to the theories built and previous studies on this scope.
Keywords: Cultural Adjustment, Perceived Discrimination, Educational Stressor, Social Support.
Scope of the Article: Social Sciences