Intercultural Experience and Socio-Psychological Adjustment of the Children Returing from Abroad

해외귀국아동의 이문화체험과 귀국 후 사회.심리적 적응

This study investigated the relationships between inter-cultural experience and socio-psychological adjustment to the current life among children who have refilmed from living abroad. The subject of research consisted of 102 boys and 110 girls from fourth grade through sixth grade who returned to their home country after living in a foreign correlation Data were collected from 5 elementary schools in Seoul. Descriptive statistics, t-tests, correlation analysis and regression were used for data analysis. The results of children's social-psychological adjustment were represented by 3 categories: school/friend relationship, stress/strain and language/learning. The following are the summarized results; First, girl students were more likely to adapt to school/friend relationships in Korea and had lower stress/strain than boys. Second, the children having shorter period of residence in foreign county, lower adaptation ability to different culture and extrovert personality showed higher socio-psychological adjustments after returning to Korea. Third, the adjustment to school/friends was influenced by period of residency in the foreign county, the experience of different culture, and extrovert personality. The experience of different culture and extrovert personality effected stress/strain, and the adjustments to language/learning were influenced only by the ewperiecne of different culture. Lastly, the experience of different culture was the most important variable influencing all 3 categories of socio-psychological adjustments.