Relationship of Self-Construal to Perceived Availability and Seeking of Social Support by International Students Studying Abroad in the United States

This study was created to examine the relationship between different self-construals and the behavior of seeking social support or the perceived availability of social support. We recruited 84 international students who currently study abroad in the United States. Participants completed the Singelis Self-construal Scale (SCS; Singelis,1994) and a Social Support Scale created for the current study. The SCS measured the degree to which participants’ self-construals are Independent (IND) or Interdependent (INT). The Social Support Scale presented five different scenarios and asked participants to rate activities responding to two types of social support (tangible support and emotional support). I predicted that those with higher levels of interdependent self-construal will have a greater level of perceived availability of social support, but a lower level of social support seeking, and those with a higher level of independent self-construal would have a greater level of social support seeking, but a lower level of perceived availability of social support. These hypotheses were not confirmed in this research; IND had significant positive correlations with both emotional and tangible support in the Perceived Availability condition but had no significant correlations with support in the Seeking condition. INT and IND were positively correlated with each other in both social support conditions