Adjustment Difficulties, Help Seeking Tendencies, and Coping Strategies of International Students

ABSTRACT: The influx of foreign students in the Philippines had indubitably brought substantial input to its economy, education, and culture. With these, institutions of higher education (HEIs) in the country admitting foreign students are challenged not only to make its academic offerings and services responsive to the demands of internalization and globalization but also to provide quality educational experiences to its foreign student populace, recognizing their needs, expectations, and vulnerabilities particularly in terms of cross-cultural adaptation. This descriptive-correlational research attempted to bring light to the understanding of foreign students‟ adjustment concerns, their help-seeking tendencies and coping strategies and the association of these variables to the personal, academic, and socio-demographic characteristics of the foreign student population. The Revised Socio-cultural Adaptation Scale (SCAS-R), the General Help-Seeking Questionnaire (GHSQ) and the Coping Strategies Inventory – Short Form (CSI-S) were utilized to educe data from 210 foreign students of Cagayan State University, Carig Campus. Results of the study accentuated the prevalence of a slight extent of difficulty experienced by the foreign students along the following adjustment areas: socio-cultural, academic, personal-psychological and survival adjustment. Further, the findings apparently shows that when confronted with adjustment difficulties, they likely manifest help-seeking behavior, with their parents as the preferred help source and that they resort much into cognitive restructuring and social contact as coping strategies. Bivariate analysis indicated that adjustment difficulty and help-seeking behavior of the foreign students are significantly related to selected demographic variables. The findings have implications on improving the efforts of HEIs particularly in designing, advocating, implementing and evaluating institutional policies and programs that will ensure the dynamic engagement and holistic development of their foreign enrolees.
KEYWORDS: adjustment concerns; help-seeking tendencies, coping strategies, international students