Social support for international students who faced emotional challenges midst Wuhan's 76-day lockdown during early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic

Cross-cultural adaptation for international nursing students from the Belt and Road Initiative in China: A follow-up survey study

Background

and Purpose: As the number of international students from Belt and Road Initiative countries continues to increase in China, it is essential to find methods to improve cross-cultural adaptation in the host country, a crucial aspect of the experiences of international nursing students. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the change in cross-cultural adaptation of international nursing students during the first year in China.

Methods

Data collection was conducted for international nursing students (n = 108) between September 2019 and August 2020, focusing on sociocultural adaptation, academic adaptation, and academic performance of international nursing students using validated questionnaires.

Results

The mean score at the follow-up time verified an increased level of sociocultural and academic adaptation and academic performance. Academic adaptation is a complete mediator between sociocultural adaptation and academic performance at two-time points, and the size of the mediation effect accounted for 95.9 % of the total effect in six months and 99.0 % in one year.

Conclusions

The findings emphasized the importance of sociocultural and academic adaptation in cross-cultural adaptation and suggest that educational institutions should provide learning environments supporting these factors to ensure academic success.

Exploring homesickness among international students in China during border closure

It is nearly three years since the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the COVID-19 crisis as a pandemic. Since its inception, border closures have been subscribed to by many countries as an extreme policy tool to curb the rate of infection amid emerging variants. China, one of the earliest countries to implement this measure just opened its borders to international students for inbound and outbound travel with several preconditions. Homesickness, a grave discomfort because of its cognitive hallmark of destabilizing the affective states and routine activities of individuals has been underexplored in many studies on the COVID-19 impact on education. This phenomenological study is the first to explore the level of border-closure-induced homesickness among international students in an Asian context (China). International students (n = 20) sampled from five universities in China were interviewed on how the COVID-19-engineered border closures have prompted homesickness among them and their development of coping skills. The thirteen (13) themes that emerged from the study suggest that the students suffered from somatic and psychological symptoms of homesickness. The social and academic life of students were negatively affected. Participants in the study relied on frequent phone calls, entertainment, and indoor and outdoor activities such as exercise and campus excursions as coping strategies against homesickness. It is advocated that higher education leaders in China put in measures to hasten the acculturation of international students to minimize their homesickness. Further research areas such as taking a keen focus on maladaptive symptoms of homesickness are also discussed.

International students' collective resilience in crisis: Sense of community reduced anxiety via social contact and social support during lockdown

Objectives

The role of community in individuals' well-being has been extensively examined in the Western context. However, little is known about how the host community is related to sojourners' well-being in a crisis in an Asian context. The current study aims at exploring international students' sense of community in the Chinese context under the direct threat of a global health crisis.

Methods

Using a cross-sectional sample of 102 international students staying in Wuhan during the 76-day lockdown at the earliest stage of the COVID-19 pandemic, the current study explored the relationship between international students' sense of community and anxiety, and the mediating role of social contact, social support from three key sources in the host community (host university, international students, and Chinese friends).

Results

Results showed that participants' stronger sense of community indirectly reduced anxiety via the role of sources of contact and support from the host community.

Conclusions

This study provided further evidence to support the nurturance of the sense of community in community resilience and provided implications on how the host community can help to enhance sojourners' psychological well-being in a global crisis.

Collective Resilience and Coping Mechanisms Among International Faculty Members Amid Snap Lockdowns During the Delta and Omicron Variant Outbreaks in East China

This study explores international faculty members’ resilience and the active challenges to establishing coping mechanisms while facing a mental health crisis provoked by the Delta and Omicron lockdowns in China. Grounded in a qualitative approach, this study used a transcendental phenomenological methodology to examine 16 international faculty members affiliated with higher education institutions in Shanghai, Hangzhou, and Nanjing. The findings showed that participants had various mental health issues amid snap lockdowns and persistent nucleic acid application tests. They perceived the most influential sources of coping mechanisms to be (a) social and emotional support; (b) prosocial behavior; and (c) engagement with the public and social services alongside the domestic faculty members. This study emphasizes the significance of collective resilience and prosocial behaviors, calling on future scholars to pay more attention to the host group’s cultural values and community resilience as coping mechanisms during the public health crisis provoked by the pandemic.

Underpinning Chinese international students’ stress and anxiety during the first wave of COVID-19 outbreak: The moderating role of wisdom

During the first wave of the COVID-19 outbreak, the Chinese diaspora, especially Chinese international students, were subjected to greater stress than others, because they were under pressure from both fear of infection and coping with acculturation (e.g., discrimination). Consequently, more research is needed to understand the anxiety induced by COVID-19 stresses on this specific cultural group. The main purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between COVID-19 stress and individuals’ anxiety, and the moderating roles of Acceptance, Reframing, and Striving (ARS) coping, the family support coping strategy, and wise reasoning. To test our predictions, we collected data from 224 Chinese international students (CIS). Results indicated a strong and positive relationship between pandemic stress and anxiety. Surprisingly, both ARS and family support coping did not moderate the association between COVID-19 stress and anxiety. Instead, wise reasoning as a potential reflective coping strategy interacted with COVID-19 stress to predict anxiety. Specifically, wise reasoning predicted more anxiety when individuals perceived a low-level of COVID-19 stress, however, such a relationship disappeared when individuals perceived a high-level of COVID-19 stress. These findings about wise-reasoning extends our understanding of wisdom and how it plays a role in the context of COVID-19.

Trauma-Informed Care: A Transcendental Phenomenology of the Experiences of International Faculty during the Delta and Omicron Variant Outbreaks in East China

This transcendental phenomenological study explored psychologically traumatic incidents and risk factors among international faculty members (IFMs) who experienced long-term lockdowns during the Delta and Omicron outbreak periods in East China. Based on empirical voices from 18 IFMs in Shanghai, Hangzhou, and Nanjing, this study used trauma-informed care as its primary theoretical lens to examine potential traumatic incidents and risk factors. Findings showed that participants had neuroses about the omen of lockdowns and felt exhausted and frustrated about persistent polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests. They also experienced or witnessed burnout and dropout due to leisure constraints. Most notably, participants had concerns about families and friends during the series of lockdowns, entailing extreme stress due to separation, illness, loss, and grief. Overall, this study provides practical implications for counseling practices about social and cultural considerations and systemic barriers that impact clients' well-being.

The dual processes of health impairment and motivation in international student adjustment in China: insights from a demands-resources model

China has become one of the leading study abroad destinations worldwide. Recent research also indicates that international students encounter diverse life challenges and mental health issues in China. Therefore, scholars have shown increasing interest in their adjustment in Chinese social and academic settings. Seeking theoretical guidance from the Job Demands-Resources Model with mediation and moderation assumptions, our study aimed to test the dual processes (i.e., the health impairment process and the motivational process) leading to academic, sociocultural, and psychological adjustment, among international students sojourning in China. Using a convenience sampling method, our study recruited 1,001 participants (535 males and 466 females; M age = 22.73; SD = 1.62) who completed an online survey including scales of perceived cultural distance (contextual demands), social support from local members (contextual resources), coping self-efficacy (personal resources), acculturative stress, intercultural engagement, as well as three types of cross-cultural adjustment (academic, sociocultural, and psychological adjustment). Results based on the structural equation modeling (SEM) analyses indicated that perceived cultural distance had indirect relationships with the three types of adjustment through the mediator of acculturative stress. Social support from locals had indirect relationships with the three types of adjustment through the mediators of acculturative stress and intercultural engagement. Coping self-efficacy had indirect relationships with academic and sociocultural adjustment through the mediator of intercultural engagement. Additionally, social support from locals was revealed as a moderator that buffered the relationship between perceived cultural distance and acculturative stress. These mediated and moderated relationships not only confirmed the dual processes underlying international student adjustment, but also added new knowledge of how demands and resources can interplay to predict the dual processes.

The 'Myth of Zero-COVID' Nation: A Digital Ethnography of Expats' Survival Amid Shanghai Lockdown during the Omicron Variant Outbreak

This study presents a digital ethnography of expats’ survival amid the Shanghai lockdown during the Omicron variant outbreak. This study drew insights from studies on resilience and secondary coping within the context of global migration to comprehend the diverse emotional challenges faced by expats in a series of lockdowns and persistent nucleic acid amplification tests. Thus, this study asks what the major emotional challenges expats faced and what sources of social support they could draw from citizens in their host country during the Shanghai lockdown. Accordingly, this study collected WeChat group conversations to draw empirical findings, promoted scholarly conversations about fundamental survival necessity, and traced the process for establishing intercultural collective resilience with citizens from their host country. Overall, this study emphasized the significance of host country members who can promote certain coping mechanisms for their visitors in the specific regional and geographical context of China.