Background: This study explores the psychological well-being of Asian international students in Sweden by identifying their sources of stress, coping strategies and resilient factors and their sources of support. The aim of this study is to have a deeper understanding of challenges for Asian international students during their study-time in Sweden to find more efficient ways to support them in the future. Method: with a qualitative approach, the data are collected through semi-structured interviews in April 2023. Participants were chosen by purposive sampling method from Asian international students in a Swedish university who study a same program. A descriptive thematic-analysis method was performed on the data to allocate the data into themes which are driven from previous relevant social theories. Findings: Five participants with an age range of 28 to 45 were enrolled in the study. all participants indicated accommodation, different academic system and being assigned an organizational number instead of personal number as well as the language barrier as sources of stress. The main emotional support source was family and appraisal support by self-motivation. Problem focused and emotional focused coping strategies were indicated by participants. They were located in the integration category, of acculturation process, in most of the aspects which helps best in maintaining psychological well-being of international students. Based on the findings, a lack of formal informational and instrumental support from the university to tackle the challenges is necessary to be planned and addressed in the future. However, there are limitations to this study therefore findings of this study should be interpreted carefully by the researchers. Conclusion: The findings of this study indicates that Asian international students in Sweden are exposed to various sources of stress. The support services can play a crucial role by providing more detailed information to ease the challenges for them. Furthermore, the study can contribute to making Sweden more attractive for highly educated international students as a future highly skilled workforce. Further research is needed to investigate other factors that influence the psychological well-being of international students in Sweden.

This thesis studies the factors that make international students from non-EU countries move to Hungary for their studies, what their experience in the host society was and how this experience affected their decisions about their post-graduation plans. Using qualitative methodology and semi-structured interviews, this research seeks to analyze the different factors that either pull these students to stay in Hungary or relocate to a different country or factors that push these students to return home. These factors are divided into three main groups: professional, personal and social factors. Overall, the results reveal that professional factors play the biggest role in either pulling students to stay in the host country or relocate onwards, while these factors were never mentioned as an incentive to return home. Personal and social factors, on the other hand, affected people differently, as some of the personal or social factors made one stay, while the same factors made others leave.

The prospective student-athletes’ use of an online recruiting platform to seek college scholarships has become a norm. College coaches recruit prospective-student athletes often using tools like global personal contacts, on-site recruiting, and online recruiting platforms. Online recruiting platforms offer several services and vary in price. This study examines female student-athlete golfers’ use of the online recruiting platform to seek scholarships from a global perspective. Previous research suggests that prospective student-athletes prefer online recruiting platforms while college coaches often use other outlets which can lead to miscommunication and lost opportunities. The services, price, and usability of 20 sports online recruiting platforms in the United States were examined to find out what is offered to prospective-student athletes. Interviews of NCAA Division I collegiate coaches were conducted to examine the most common recruiting tools used by the coaches and their opinions of the use of online recruiting platforms.

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<p>Many Caribbean international students travel to Canada to complete their post-secondary education. Upon graduation, these students often remain in Canada to work as opposed to returning home. This study identifies the factors that influenced Caribbean international students’ decisions of whether to remain in Canada or to return home and evaluates the relative importance of their labour market perceptions in light of all of the factors influencing their decisions. Factors such as easy labour market entry, high wages, less stringent immigration policies, careers relevant to the students’ degrees, family ties and relationships with loved ones, discrimination in the labour market, lifestyle and attitudes of governing bodies and prominent community members can all act as push or pull factors in Canada, the host country, or the students’ countries of origin. These factors influence the students’ decisions of whether they should remain in Canada to work or return home. However, results support the conclusion that labour market perceptions are the most significant factors in students’ decision making.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

The purpose of the study was to examine factors such as the number of years lived in the U.S., English proficiency, neuroticism, openness, and music therapy student academic stress (MTSAS) that predict acculturative stress among international music therapy students studying in the U.S. An on-line survey was conducted with a U.S. sample of international music therapy students. Among the 134 participants who originally came from 25 countries returned the survey, 97 with complete data (88 women and 9 men; 38 undergraduate and 59 graduate students) were included in the main analyses. Results showed this sample had a substantially higher mean on acculturative stress (M = 83.04) than the normative mean (M = 66.32) reported by Sandhu and Asrabadi (1994). In addition, 13 participants' (12.89%) scores were within the "high risk" category, indicating the need for psychological intervention. Asian students were found to have experienced a higher level of acculturative stress than their European counterparts. There were no significant differences found between undergraduate and graduate students relating to levels of acculturative stress. Correlational analyses indicated that acculturative stress had significant correlations with level of English proficiency, neuroticism, and MTSAS. There were no significant findings regarding years lived in the U.S., openness, and level of acculturative stress. Regression analyses revealed that (a) the entire set of 5 aforementioned predictors accounted for 41% of variance in acculturative stress, which is considered a large effect size, and (b) among these predictors, English proficiency, neuroticism, and MTSAS appeared to be the most powerful predictors of acculturative stress. In addition, making presentations, taking exams, and participating in class discussion were found to be the most stressful classroom activities. Implications for music therapy and future research directions are discussed. / Music Therapy

This thesis examined how international students experience life in the UK and, in particular, how these students respond to experiences with discrimination and social exclusion. Specifically, we drew on the rejection-identification model (Branscombe et al., 1999) in order to examine the impact of minority group identification as a coping strategy against perceptions of discrimination. Despite the number of studies supporting the rejection-identification model (e.g. Schmitt et al., 2002, Schmitt et al., 2003), discrepant findings were found in other research (e.g. McCoy & Major, 2003; Eccleston & Major, 2006). In order to solve these inconsistencies we proposed to extend this model in two important ways. Firstly, building on important work on the multidimensionality of social identification (e.g. Cameron & Lalonde, 2001; Ellemers et al., 1999; Jackson, 2002), we argued that a multidimensional perspective of the rejection-identification model is fundamental given that different dimensions of social identification (i.e. ingroup affect, centrality, and ingroup ties) have different effects on psychological well-being. Secondly, we hypothesised that the protective effect of the different dimensions of social identification depended upon individual preferences, beliefs and behaviours towards own and host group (i.e. acculturation strategies). These two extensions to the rejection-identification model were tested longitudinally with a sample of 160 international students. Results indicated that none of the dimensions of social identification serve to protect students from the harmful effects of discrimination. Indeed, support was found for the argument that it is important to investigate possible moderators of the rejection-identification relationship. Our results also indicated that when international students perceive discrimination, a separation strategy allows them to maintain ingroup affect, and in this way protect their self-esteem. Integration, marginalisation, and assimilation strategies were associated with lower ingroup affect leaving these students without a successful strategy to cope with discrimination. Although the aim of this thesis was to examine the experiences of international students, in Chapter 7 we replicated our previous model with a sample of Polish immigrants (N = 66) in order to test whether our results could be generalised to other minority groups. Results supported the previous findings with international students. Finally, the discussion of this thesis focused on the importance of taking into account individual acculturation strategies in order to understand the relation between perceived discrimination, minority group identification, and well-being. We also focused on how the knowledge generated by this research may support international students.

I interviewed twenty-four International students from the following countries: Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Peru, Colombia, Brazil, Puerto Rico and Spain. Hereafter I shall refer to the respondents as Hispanic International students. My primary interest was to learn the way in which Hispanic International students defined themselves in view of ethnic definitions imposed on them by the administrative system in the U.S. First, Hispanic International students defined themselves primarily by their nationality. The second finding dealt with the usage of language. The Hispanic International students spoke Spanish with relatives and friends. They spoke English when a non-Spanish speaker joined the conversation. The third finding was related to the problems and adaptations encountered by Hispanic International students.