Page 83 - Never Too Far Away? The Roles of Social Network Sites in Sojourners’ Adjustment

consequences of using Facebook in dealing with sojourn-related social difficulties, such as homesickness. With these information, support providers and sojourners themselves are aware of the risks (e.g., online addiction) of relying on Facebook to deal with homesickness. There should be information campaigns, counseling services, therapies or rehabilitation programs available for sojourners in relation to (problematic) Facebook (or social media) use. Furthermore, these results could provide insights on the practical consequences of the use of other forms of computer-mediated communication among sojourners. Lastly, support programs should not merely focus on early sojourners. Sojourners who have been in the host country for a relatively longer period of time might still need assistance.
Limitations and recommendations
We have to take into consideration several limitations when interpreting the results of this current study. Considering other studies that focused on similar populations, this study had a relatively good sample size (Zhang & Goodson, 2011). However, future studies should ensure a larger sample size across the waves for greater statistical power and greater flexibility in SEM (e.g., latent variable modeling). The sample size also limited the inclusion of potential moderators or control variables (e.g., level of education, general Facebook use, host- versus co- national host-country networks, number of home-country visits, distance from the home country, etc.). Future studies should provide a more nuanced exploration of these variables to effectively capture the complexities of SNS use in sojourners’ adjustment.
We also recommend for future studies to explore the multidimensionality of homesickness and sociocultural adjustment. Our data are a part of a larger survey that covered several variables related to international students sojourn experiences, so we had to use shorter versions of scales. Also, we decided on a single-item measure for homesickness, not only because it was a short, valid measure, but also because most of the validated scales have items that overlapped with other variables in the survey (e.g., sociocultural adjustment, depression, perceived social support) (English et al., 2017; Stroebe et al. 2015a; Ward & Kennedy, 1999).
Another limitation of this current study is that the concept of culture was not directly tackled and was not included as a variable in the study. In previous research on sojourners’ adjustment, culture was a prominent concept (Berry, 2006; Kim, 2017; Ward et. al., 2001). Future studies should problematize and incorporate cultural variables in the study of homesickness. Stroebe et al. (2015a), for instance,
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