Skip to main content

BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article

Front. Psychol.
Sec. Educational Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1485375
This article is part of the Research Topic Culture and Emotion in Educational Dynamics - Volume III View all 5 articles

Developing the Chinese version of the Index of Sojourner Social Support: The roles of socio-emotional and instrumental support in internal migrant university students

Provisionally accepted
Hanzhi Fu Hanzhi Fu *
  • Shanghai International Studies University, Shanghai, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Introduction: This study aims to validate the Index of Sojourner Social Support (ISSS)--a widelyused scale for measuring social support in cross-cultural (including cross-national and internal) migrations--in Chinese contexts among internal migrant university students and explore how such support can facilitate their psychological adjustment.Methods: 1,692 university students who migrated from all around China to the city of Shanghai participated in this study. The ISSS was translated according to strict procedures. Item analysis, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), reliability analysis, measurement equivalence test, criterion validity test, and incremental validity test of the Chinese version of the ISSS (ISSS-C) were carried out.Results: The ISSS-C generated by this study had two dimensions (socio-emotional support and instrumental support) of 18 items. The model fit was excellent (χ²/df = 5.64, CFI = 0.96, TLI = 0.95, SRMR = 0.03, and RMSEA = 0.06). The McDonald's omegas for its two subscales were both 0.96.The measurement equivalence of the ISSS-C and criterion validity were also excellent. Instrumental support significantly influenced students' psychological adjustment to the host culture, partially establishing incremental validity for the scale.Discussion: The ISSS-C exhibits good psychometric properties and is appropriate for measuring social support perceived by migrant university students in Chinese cultural contexts. Further, instrumental support can assist them in psychologically adjusting well to local environments.

    Keywords: Index of Sojourner Social Support1, socio-emotional support2, instrumental support3, scale validation4, internal migration5, university students6, China7

    Received: 12 Sep 2024; Accepted: 27 Jan 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Fu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Hanzhi Fu, Shanghai International Studies University, Shanghai, China

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.