A Study on Socio-Cultural Adaptation and Psychological Distress among International Students Using Social Support as a Moderator

The present study was conducted to find the psychological distress and socio cultural adaptation difficulties of the International students studying in United Kingdom. It further explores the moderating effect of social support on the socio cultural adaptation difficulties. When a person from one culture moves to different culture it requires lots of psychological adjustment to adapt and accept the new culture. And when it comes to students it becomes even difficult as they have to adapt in the new culture and manage academic challenges simultaneously. Ward and Kennedy has been a pioneer in this field as they have done studies on the socio cultural adaptation of overseas students and about their cultural transitions. At the same time if they get good social support in the host country it helps the students to cope well with stress situations and to adapt easily with new culture (Mallinclodt & Leong,1992). The study was a questionnaire based correlation study where the Demographic Questionnaire, General Health Questionnaire GHQ-12, Socio Cultural Adaptation Scale SCAS-29 and the Short Form Social Support (SSQ-6) were used. It was hypothesized that those with psychological difficulties will have more problems in socio cultural adaptation and the inability to adapt well in the new culture will result in psychological distress. In addition, it was also hypothesized that social support would moderate the effect of psychological distress on socio cultural adaptation. The correlation and multiple regressions were used for analyzing data and findings suggested that strong correlation between socio cultural adaptation and psychological distress as significant values were obtained and further regression analysis also supports that General health Questionnaire GHQ-12 is a strong predictor of Socio Cultural Adaptation (SCAS).