Abstract
Stress and depression can be seen as the major obstacles for sustained education and attainment of foreign students, and in turn, the sustainability of an education system as a whole. However, the mainstream consideration following Berry’s model on acculturation does not take into account whether students of the host countries are immune to these problems. This study aims to examine the prevalence and predictors of help-seeking behaviors among international and domestic students in a multicultural environment by employing ANOVA and polynomial regression. Some significant results from this study are: (1) Informal sources were the most prevalent sources of help-seeking among international and domestic students, while formal help-seeking was not popular; (2) international students were more likely to overcome emotional difficulties alone and seek help on the Internet than domestic students; (3) acculturative stress was a positive predictor of formal, informal, and miscellaneous help-seeking behaviors among international students and informal help-seeking behaviors or among domestic students; and (4) depression was negatively correlated with the willingness of international students to seek help from informal sources. The findings hint at the risk of acculturative stress faced by domestic students in a multicultural environment being overlooked and the lack of help-seeking sources for international students. The study also provides empirical evidence for policy-planners to design a sustainable education system better at supporting students dealing with depression and acculturative stress.
Highlights
One-way ANOVA was used to examine the significant differences in socio-demographic characteristics, the main predictors, and help-seeking sources between two groups of students
As for the main predictors, only the level of acculturative stress was statistically significant at p-value < 0.001, which means that international students were more likely to possess higher acculturative stress than domestic students (75.562 > 62.835)
By conducting a survey at an international university in Japan, this study is a primary study on the prevalence of help-seeking behaviors and predictors of help-seeking behaviors of students in a multicultural environment
Summary
As globalization is making the world more interconnected than ever, the exchange of knowledge and workforce, the two key driving factors of the world development, has increased both in quality and quantity. International student inbound and outbound have significantly increased. According to UNESCO, the number of international students worldwide has grown over 25% in. 5 years, from 2012 to 2017 [1]. In Japan, the growth rate is even more impressive. From 2012 to 2017, the number of international students in Japan increased by 93.9%, from 137,756 to 267,042 students [2,3]
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