A study on the relationship between intercultural communication competence and life satisfaction of international students at guangxi university of foreign languages

บทคัดย่อ

          This study aimed to examine the relationship between intercultural communicative competence (ICC) and life satisfaction among international students at Guangxi University of Foreign Languages. Specifically, it investigated (1) the relationship between overall ICC and life satisfaction, (2) the relationships between the dimensions of ICC and overall life satisfaction, and (3) the relationships between ICC and the dimensions of life satisfaction.

            A quantitative research design was adopted, and convenience sampling was employed to select 130 international students. The research instruments consisted of an Intercultural Communication Competence Scale comprising 22 items across four dimensions—linguistic communication competence, non-verbal communication competence, cultural awareness and tolerance, and conflict resolution competence—and a Life Satisfaction Scale comprising 20 items across four dimensions—academic life satisfaction, social life satisfaction, daily life service satisfaction, and psychological adaptation satisfaction. The content validity index (CVI) of the research instruments was 0.88. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficients for the Intercultural Communication Competence Scale and the Life Satisfaction Scale were 0.918 and 0.902, respectively. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation, hierarchical regression, and multiple regression.

            The findings were summarized according to the research objectives. First, overall ICC was significantly and positively correlated with overall life satisfaction (r = 0.642, p < 0.001) and significantly predicted life satisfaction (β = 0.565, p < 0.001), explaining 41.5% of the variance. Second, all dimensions of ICC were significantly and positively related to overall life satisfaction. Third, ICC was significantly and positively related to the dimensions of life satisfaction, with linguistic communication competence primarily predicting academic life satisfaction, non-verbal communication competence primarily predicting social life satisfaction, and cultural awareness and tolerance showing the strongest predictive effect on psychological adaptation satisfaction.

          The findings suggest that intercultural communicative competence plays an important role in international students’ life satisfaction and cross-cultural adaptation.