a growing experience - Student Services - University of Melbourne

HEALTH AND WELL-BEING OF INTERNATIONAL STUDENTSbelong to organisations at the university and off campus, including religious groups,significantly more than females.Female students do show greater levels of psychological distress than male students.They have significantly higher scores on the Abuse and Distress scale and the Stressscale. They have lower levels of self-esteem, have experienced greater distress aboutrelationships during their studies here and are involved in a significantly higher levelof self-harm. In contrast, males are significantly more involved in gambling andsmoking, possibly an alternative form of maladaptive response. Consistent with thesedifferences, there are significantly more females than expected among studentsexhibiting an unconnected and stressed style of adaptation and significantly moremale students than expected among those with a distressed and risk-taking approach.While the gender differences mentioned are all statistically significant, the effect sizesare almost all small, about .2. The exception is the gender difference on the Abuseand Distress scale, where there is a medium effect size of .55, indicating an area thatis important to consider. Female students feel generally less safe than male students.They experience a higher rate of physical abuse and sexual harassment, but a lowerrate of verbal abuse than male students. They also report a higher level of distressthan males in response to abuse. These findings are consistent with other recentAustralian findings of a lesser feeling of safety and a greater experience of badtreatment among female compared with male international students in Australia(Deumart et al., 2004; Deumert, Marginson, Nyland, Ramia, & Sawir, in press).RELATIONSHIPSTwo demographic variables concerning relationships were examined for theirassociation with students’ sense of well-being in different domains of life in Australia:marital status and, for those with children, having a child present with them inAustralia.Although four categories of marital status were provided for response, only twostudents indicated that they were divorced or separated and only one was widowed.As a result, analyses focused on two categories only: being single or beingmarried/partnered. Group differences on the basis of marital status are mainlyconcerned with social activity, experience of cultural stress, other forms ofpsychological distress and sexual behaviour.Single students mix significantly more than married/partnered students with coculturalson and off campus, and significantly less with Australians in both locations.They also belong to more organisations at the university and outside, includingreligious groups, than their married/partnered counterparts. It is interesting that thetwo groups do not differ significantly in terms of their connectedness in Melbourne.One might expect that being married or partnered would increase a sense ofconnectedness, although only if the partner were also living in Melbourne.Single students experience higher levels of cultural stress and stress from familyexpectations than married/partnered students. Single students also experience greaterdepression and anxiety, as well as a lower level of self-esteem. This finding, at leastin part, confounds marital status with age, because single students are much youngerthan married/partnered students (21.9 years compared with 28.2 years). YoungerRosenthal, Russell & Thomson, 2006 122