Page 120 - Movers, Shapers, and Everything in Between: Influencers of the International Student Experience
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Chapter 6
enrolment, proportion of international students, and local population and the satisfaction of undergraduate international students.
When looking at student characteristics, the study predicted that first- year students would report significantly higher levels of satisfaction than second- and final-year students. We also predicted that female students would be significantly more satisfied than male students. The researchers used a quantitative approach to test these hypotheses, relying on data from the 2017 International Student Barometer (ISB).
Factor analysis resulted in a robust construct ‘university reputation,’ which was then used in a multilevel model to test the relationship between the independent variables -university reputation, size, proportion of international students and local population, and student gender and stage of study - and the dependent variables - overall satisfaction, satisfaction with learning experience, and satisfaction with life experience at the college. Results were analyzed and interpreted using a summative content analysis of student comments.
The results confirmed some, but not all, of the hypotheses. Overall satisfaction with the university experience was predicted by the students’ stage of study, i.e., first-year students were more satisfied than final-year or other students. None of the other variables were predictive of overall satisfaction. Summary analysis of comments from the ISB showed that students in later academic years made a disproportionately high number of comments relative to their representation in the data and first-year students made a disproportionately low number of comments. None of the variables were significantly predictive of satisfaction with the learning experience.
Satisfaction with the living experience was predicted by university reputation and the proportion of international undergraduate students. As the university’s reputation increases, satisfaction with the living experience increases. The opposite was true for the proportion of international students and satisfaction: the higher the proportion of




























































































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