Page 69 - Never Too Far Away? The Roles of Social Network Sites in Sojourners’ Adjustment

may have reciprocal effects and exacerbate each other (Stroebe et al., 2015b). In our current study, we focused on a particular type of adjustment, sociocultural adjustment, which are reactions related to the acquisition of social and practical skills in negotiating and managing daily life in the new environment (i.e., host country) (Berry, 2006; Ward & Kennedy, 1999). In the tradition of cross-cultural studies of sojourn experiences, homesickness has been theorized as a predictor of sociocultural adjustment (Berry, 2006; Constantine, Kindaichi, Okazaki, Gainor, & Baden, 2007; Poyrazli & Lopez, 2007; Ward et al., 2001). Poor adjustment in the host country could be a consequence of homesickness. However, poor adjustment may impact homesickness as well (Stroebe et al., 2015a; 2015b). We, therefore, hypothesized that:
H1: Higher homesickness predicts lower sociocultural adjustment. H2: Higher sociocultural adjustment predicts lower homesickness.
Method
In testing the model (Figure 1), we used a longitudinal panel design. The longitudinal panel design is useful in establishing directions of impacts and evaluating temporal order (Finkel, 1995; Kline, 2016). In this study, we examined the lag time by testing both short-term and long-term reciprocal associations between social interactions, homesickness, as well as between homesickness and sociocultural adjustment.
Participants and procedures
We collected via an online questionnaire a 3-wave panel data with an interval of three months in-between assessments consistent with a previous study on student sojourners (Hechanova-Alampay, Beehr, Christiansen, & Van Horn, 2002). We recruited international students to participate in our first survey on Facebook by posting several announcements on relevant Facebook pages (e.g., Erasmus Student Network, university international offices). Participation in the study was voluntary. As a form of compensation and to encourage participation, the participants could join a raffle draw in each time point, where ten of them got the chance to be selected to each receive 50 euros gift voucher.
For the first data collection, there was a total of 414 participants (n = 246, 59.4% women; n = 168, 40.6% men). For the second round of data collection,
SNS, Homesickness, and Adjustment 67