Acculturative Stress and Coping Strategies of foreign Students:A Systematic Review

The aim of the present study is to review the empirical studies to explore and examine the relationship between acculturative stress and coping strategies of foreign students. A literature search using JSTOR, J-Gate and Google Scholar database covers the period from 2000 to 2015, the authors acknowledged 17 peer reviewed studies (full text) gathering inclusion criteria. Search terms were Acculturation, acculturative stress, coping strategies, and foreign students. This search generate empirical studies which includes participants from Atrican, Arabian, Asian, Caribbean, Chinese, Korean, Hong Kong, Latino, Polish, Mexican, Norway and Somali countries. After examining different aspect of the 17 empirical papers, it was found that there is significant association between acculturative stress and coping strategies. However, findings are not agreed over the effectiveness of different coping strategies. Some studies reported, problem focused coping strategies are more effective rather than other two viz. emotional focused and avoidance focused coping strategies. Moreover, research on acculturative stress and coping strategies of foreign students has not yet been conducted in India. The theoretical and practical issues have been discussed.