Abstract:

The present paper aims to design a valid and reliable scale to explore the challenges faced by international students in Indian Universities. Literature review, open-ended questionnaire and focus group interviews identified themes for identifying items for scale. Rephrasing and removing has been done for ambiguous items to ensure face and content validity. Finally, a survey has been conducted on 272 respondents and responses recorded on a five-point Likert scale. Factor analysis was performed using principal components analysis and varimax rotation. It resulted into extraction of 33 potential items among four factors identified as critical domains of challenges namely social challenges, academic challenges, personal adjustment challenges and visa –related challenges. Reliability of items was tested using SPSS 21 software and it was found adequate. Results revealed that this scale can be used for exploring the challenges faced by international students in Indian universities context.

Keywords:

International students, challenges, Indian Universities, factor analysis, focus groups.