Congratulations to Florin Timish who successfully defended his MA thesis in April, 2021
Thesis Title: Cultural Adaptation in International Students: Proposing the GoalOpportunity Model of Acculturation (GOMA), and Developing and Exploring the Cultural Fit Questionnaire (CFQ)
Abstract: A goal-opportunity model of acculturation, according to which sojourner’s goals align with the opportunities of the host culture, can evaluate adaptation to a new sociocultural environment as functional, predictable, and meaningful. Although the model builds on the previous construct of cultural fit (Ward & Chang, 1997), it also aims to redefine the construct. Determining the right components of the cultural fit dimension as the core of adaptation is nonetheless challenging, as there are different constructs that can be considered. Previous adaptation models have promoted the person-culture alignment (e.g., cultural fit) either as the mitigation of the sociocultural gap between the native and host cultures (Church, 1982), or as the match between specific personality traits (e.g., openness, extroversion) and the values of the host culture (Ward & Chang, 1997). However, those models disregard valuable cognitive factors, such as autonomy, problem-solving ability, decision-making skills, achievement need, goal setting, motivation, participation, and effort. This thesis introduces goal-opportunity cultural fit as a contextual measurement of cultural adaptation in international students, as a group of sojourners with high achievement needs. Using exploratory factor analysis to refine a new measurement instrument˗˗the Cultural Fit Questionnaire˗˗the current study attempts to show that the person-culture alignment can be measured, predicted, and interpreted. It is expected that this new model of acculturation based on evaluating cultural fit as a goal-opportunity alignment will offer a better understanding of cultural adaptation in goal-driven sojourners with a need for achievement and autonomy, such as it is the case with international students.
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