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The social norm to study abroad: determinants and effects

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Abstract

The acquisition of intercultural skills by studies abroad is often considered as desirable. But although we can observe a steady increase of studies abroad in the last two decades, the vast majority of students can, obviously, compete on the labor market also without study abroad experience. This leads to the consideration that it could be increasingly a socially expected and thus normative behavior to study abroad, which develops only in specific social and professional contexts. In this paper, both the conditions and effects of a social norm to study abroad are discussed theoretically and empirically. Data of a cross-sectional survey among students of economics and engineering at a German university are used. The direct mobility experience is the strongest predictor of a social norm to study abroad and this norm, in turn, determines the intention to study abroad most, compared to expected personality development and career success. The results are finally discussed in terms of possible effects on individual mobility biographies and social inequality.

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Notes

  1. Usually more men than women study engineering. As mentioned in the literature review, a gender gap in studies abroad is described by a number of studies. Men tend to place less importance on personal development through studying abroad. Considering the sample, 66.25 % of the students are male. Indeed, the discipline correlates with gender with r = −0.218. This implicates weak collinearity, so that the estimations of the discipline effects on the norm and the attitudes can be biased. However, the values of the variance inflation factor as an indicator of collinearity are not critical for the discipline (VIF = 1.13). Moreover, all models were calculated by including a multiplicative term of the gender and the discipline variables. But the interaction terms did not become statistically significant. Therefore, an excessive bias of the discipline estimators is not likely and models are reported as described.

  2. As pointed out in the theoretical section and as reported in Table 5, the discipline and the dimension of the perceived increase of job market opportunities through studies abroad are not independent but weakly correlated. Here collinearity may bias job market opportunities effects. In the overall model the variance inflation factor of the job opportunities variable is not very low (VIF = 1.42). However, compared to the single model (VIF = 1.07), it is mainly based on the other attitudes and the norm but not on the discipline. Nevertheless, interaction terms between both variables were included in the single and the overall model to improve the estimations. They did not become statistically significant and did not show any substantial influences on the effects reported above. The same applies for an interaction term of the discipline and the norm itself, which is neither significant in the single nor in the overall model. Thus the interpretation is ascertained. Similarly, again, all models were calculated with interaction terms between gender and discipline to exclude collinearity biases of the discipline effects. No single term has been statistically significant. The variance inflation factor for the discipline is also not problematic in the models (VIF = 1.15/1.19).

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Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank the editors and two anonymous reviewers for their many helpful comments and constructive remarks. We thank Franziska Reif for proofreading of the manuscript. This research was supported by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, Germany [Grant Number 01PW11013].

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, Kapuzinergasse 2, 85072, Eichstätt, Germany

    Knut Petzold

  2. School of Ecomomic Disciplines, University of Siegen, Hölderlinstraße 3, 57076, Siegen, Germany

    Knut Petzold & Tamara Peter

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Correspondence to Knut Petzold.

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Petzold, K., Peter, T. The social norm to study abroad: determinants and effects. High Educ 69, 885–900 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-014-9811-4

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