“How can you make friends if you don't know who you are?” A qualitative examination of international students' experience informed by the Social Identity Model of Identity Change

Abstract

This paper explores the contribution of social identity change to international students' health and well‐being. International students typically face a range of challenges from the time they leave their home country, including the need to adapt both to a new culture and norms and to a new educational landscape. Previous research informed by the Social Identity Model of Identity Change (SIMIC) suggests that during such life transitions, an individual's group memberships and associated social identities can provide a buffer against the threats to well‐being that such transitions present. To examine the relevance of SIMIC for the transitions that international students' experience, semistructured interviews were conducted with 15 international students attending an Australian university. Thematic analysis provided support for the relevance of SIMIC's social identity gain and social identity maintenance pathways in the transition and revealed a number of associated factors that acted as either facilitators (e.g., a host family that supported community integration) or barriers (e.g., experiencing culture shock) to social identity change. These findings present the first qualitative support for SIMIC within an international student population and help to flesh out the specific ways in which social identity processes contribute to both positive and negative health and well‐being outcomes.

Supporting International Students: Enhancing College Counselors’ Multicultural Counseling Competence

“…An absence of social support (Zhang & Goodson, ) and differences in values between their cultures of origin and U.S. culture (Lee & Carrasquillo, ) may negatively affect international students struggling to adapt to the cultural norms of the academic environment. For example, Ng, Haslam, Haslam, and Cruwys () explored international students’ social identity change in adjusting to the United States and found that cultural differences were a significant barrier to the students forming meaningful friendships and social connections. One international student participant explained, “For my new friends here, because we don't know each other deep, you do not know how they think, how is the way they ask each other.…”

“…One international student participant explained, “For my new friends here, because we don't know each other deep, you do not know how they think, how is the way they ask each other. Just, for me, I just always scared that I'll say something wrong” (Ng et al, , p. 178). Although international students may have acquaintances, meaningful social connections are far less common.…”

Learning from a social identity perspective

“…The user experience was measured quantitatively and desirability. We also assessed the predictive validity of the oSIM, hypothesizing that it should be able to replicate associations with well-being previously demonstrated in the social cure literature (e.g., as reviewed by Ng et al, 2018). Finally, contextual adaptability was assessed by examining the relationship between oSIM variables and contextually-specific outcome measures that are theoretically and/or practically relevant in a particular domain (e.g.,…”

“…Increasingly, researchers are interrogating the psychological mechanisms that underpin the associations between social connection and personal wellbeing (Fritsche, Jonas, & Fankhänel, 2008;Greenaway, Wright, et al, 2015). In particular, programmatic work informed by a social identity approach points to the value of studying the mechanisms that underpin what have been referred to as 'social cure' effects (Jetten, Haslam, & Haslam, 2012;Ng, Haslam, Haslam, & Cruwys, 2018). Nevertheless, it remains the case that researchers' capacity to assess social identity is limited by the measurement tools at their disposal.…”

“…In the present research, we use oSIM to address this problem by examining the degree to which mere number of groups is predictive of well-being in the absence of other indicators of the quality of connection with those groups. Our intuition was that quantity of group memberships alone is unlikely to have a strong impact on well-being, drawing on Tajfel's original definition of social identities as requiring emotional significance, as well as modern refinements to the theory (Jetten et al, 2012;Ng et al, 2018;Sani, Madhok, Norbury, Dugard, & Wakefield, 2015;Tajfel, 1972). In particular, we expect to find evidence for a key hypothesis specified within the social identity approach to health; namely, the multiple identities hypothesis, which specifically predicts that quality and quantity of group memberships operate in concert to scaffold health:…”