Abstract

The purpose of this study is to understand East Asian international student’s underutilization of counseling services (versus U.S. domestic students) by applying Theory of Reasoned Action/Planned Behavior (TRA/PB) and Ludwikowski, Vogel, and Armstrong (2009)’s stigma model to help-seeking. Participants were 146 East Asian international students and 210 domestic college students at Purdue University. AMOS 23.0 for Structural Equation Modeling was used to conduct a Latent Mean Analysis (LMA) and a multigroup analysis. The multigroup analysis results found that help-seeking intention was explained by the same hypothesized model in both groups, which was based on the TRA/PB (Ajzen, 2012) and the stigma model (Ludwikowski et al., 2009). However, no significant group differences were found for most of the hypothesized paths, except a path from personal stigma to self-stigma. The LMA results revealed that East Asian international students reported significantly higher help-seeking intention and lower self-stigma and perceived behavior control. Historically, Asian students are known to have more stigma and negative attitudes (Sue & Sue, 2008), so this finding draws our attention to the further cross-cultural studies about the reason for this discrepancy. Implications for theory, research, and practice are addressed.

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Educational Studies

Committee Chair

Ayse Ciftci

Date of Award

8-2016

First Advisor

Ayse Ciftci

Committee Member 1

Blake A. Allan

Committee Member 2

Eric D. Deemer

Committee Member 3

Susan L. Prieto-Welch

Download

Share

COinS