Who I am is Shaped by my Past and Impacts my Future: Exploring Antecedents and Outcomes of Self-Views across International, Immigrant, and Canadian born Undergraduate Students
Abstract
This dissertation focused on how various self-views variables (self-esteem, self-concept, and self-concept clarity) differ across and within groups of university students, are influenced by internal and external factors, and predict academic and non-academic variables. Key models of self and group perceptions were used in deriving hypotheses (i.e., Shavelson, Hubner & Stanton, 1976; Bosson & Swann Jr, 2009; Stephan, Ybarra, & Morrison, 2009). Across the four studies, self-report questionnaires were used. Studies 1 and 4 were completed online by international, immigrant, and Canadian born students. Studies 2 and 3 examined only international students, involved an experimental manipulation, and were conducted in-lab. The aim of Study 1 was to ascertain if self-concept scores differ across international, immigrant, and Canadian born students. Immigrant students had higher math self-concept than Canadian-born students, and international students had lower verbal and academic self-concept than non-international students. Study 2 was designed to explore whether self-concepts (general, academic, and verbal) and self-esteem levels of international students would be affected when primed with threat, and to see whether resilience and acculturative stress would moderate the threat-self-views link. Scores did not differ across conditions and moderations were non-significant.
In Study 3, the hypotheses in Study 2 were reexamined with a different experimental manipulation. Other differences between these studies were the inclusion of a positive non-threat priming condition and measures of self-concept clarity and religion self-concept. Self-views scores did not differ across priming conditions. However, with increasing levels of acculturative stress, the drop in general self-concept was smaller for those in the positive non-threat condition than in the neutral condition. Study 4 assessed whether there were group differences in the prediction of outcomes by self-views variables. Results indicated that self-views predict outcomes in expected ways (e.g., academic self-concept predicts GPA), but that there are group differences in prediction (e.g., immigrant students reported lower levels of life satisfaction compared to Canadian born students as levels of general self-concept increased). In sum, international, immigrant, and Canadian born students differ across self-concept domains and in predictor-criterion relationships, and the self-perceptions of international students change depending on context. Implications for educational stakeholders and self-views researchers are outlined.