The Effects of Social Capital and Acculturation Stress on School Adaptation of Adolescents of Multi-cultural Family

Abstract

Abstract This study conducted a survey 185 adolescents in multi-cultural family to measure the level of their social capital and their acculturation stress and examined how it affects them to adapt to school. Followings are the main results of this study. First, after measuring the social capital level of those surveyed, their average was lower than the normal level, showing 2.24(SD=.32), and their acculturation stress showed 2.54(SD=.58), a bit higher than the normal level. Second, their level of adapting to school showed 2.26(SD=.39), which was lower than the normal level, and there was statistically a meaningful difference between the groups depending on their grade, academic level, economic level, parents‘ marital status, mother’s Korean ability. Third, the factors that affected in adapting to school were in the order of their network of social capital(β=.225), mother’s Korean ability(β=.195), acculturation stress(β=-.175), interpersonal trust of social capital(β=.171), norm of social capital(β=.161), parents‘ marital status(β=.156), academic level(β=.151), economic level(β=.145). Based on these results, this study suggest ways to promote trust building among people and network formation through active use of information communication, and to improve multi-cultural acceptability by developing and using various contents.