International nursing students' culture shock and academic engagement: The moderating role of resilience

Abstract

Background: The nursing profession has experienced a growing influx of international nursing students pursuing nursing degrees in the current era. Predicting and controlling culture shock among this special group is a critical issue as it shapes their academic engagement. Building resilience capabilities among this set of students is a pivotal necessity to buffer the effect of culture shock on their academic engagement.

Objective: To explore the relationship between culture shock and academic engagement among international nursing students, and investigate the moderating effect of resilience on this relationship.

Design: Cross-sectional correlational study.

Setting: Three faculties of nursing at Egypt.

Participants: A total of 252 international nursing students were assessed for eligibility. Twelve students were excluded, and out of the 240 respondents to the survey, 233 responses were valid and were ultimately analyzed.

Methods: A hand-delivered anonymous questionnaire in Arabic and English that consisted of four parts was used to collect the data. It included students' characteristics and relevant data, the culture shock questionnaire, the academic resilience scale, and the university student engagement inventory. The data collection spans from the beginning of November 2023 to the end of December 2023. Descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, and linear regression were employed via SPSS and Process Macro to test the hypothetical relationships among the study variables.

Results: There was a significant negative correlation between culture shock and the academic engagement of international nursing students. Culture shock and resilience are powerful predictors of their academic engagement. The moderating effect of resilience on the relationship between culture shock and the academic engagement of international nursing students was statistically significant, making it less negative.

Conclusion: Culture shock is an inevitable phenomenon among international nursing students and has a negative effect on their academic engagement and performance. This negative effect could be buffered by maximizing the resilience capabilities of this set of students.

Keywords: Academic engagement; Academic resilience; Culture shock; International students; Nursing; Nursing students; Resilience.