One size does not fit all: multi-group analysis of international students’ cross-cultural adaptation using MICOM

ABSTRACT

This study was carried out to investigate the discrepancies that international students’ geographical region could create on the relationships of adjustment attitude, attachment attitude, and intention after graduation with psychological and sociocultural adaptations. As such, multi-group analysis was performed using partial least squares structural equation modelling to explore whether international students’ geographical place of origin (i.e. Asia, Middle East, and Africa) could play an important role in creating differences among the three groups of international students. To ensure that the measurement operations yield measures of the same attribute across the three groups of respondents, a new approach for establishing measurement invariance in composite models was applied in SmartPLS. The data were randomly collected from 1186 international students enrolled in a Master or Doctoral programme in top six public universities in Malaysia. Findings confirmed the existence of full measurement invariance across the three models in this study. The results also revealed that there are some similarities and differences among the Asian, Middle Eastern, and African models providing further understanding on each group's cross-cultural adaptation. Practical and empirical implications of the study are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Internationalization of education
• higher education mobility
• cross-cultural adaptation
• multi-group analysis
• MICOM

Acknowledgements

Authors also would like to thank Professor Jörg Henseler and Professor Christian M. Ringle for reading and commenting on an earlier draft of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Azadeh Shafaei http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3329-6293

Mehran Nejati http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1199-8617

Additional information

Funding

The authors acknowledge the support of Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) through Research University Grant [grant number 1001/PGURU/816267].