한국거주 중국유학생의 문화적응 스트레스와 체중변화에 관한 연구

초록

Although acculturative stress and health have become a popular research topic, little is known about whether acculturative stress influences weight change. This study was conducted to explore two goals: first, which factors influence acculturative stress and the second, which factors influence weight change. A cross-sectional study was performed to investigate the acculturative stress on Chinese international students (n=320) who is residing in South Korea. The subjects included 44% male and 56% female with a mean age of 22.7 ± 2.7 years. Acculturative stress was derived from the self-reported questionnaires from the Acculturative Stress Scale for International Students (ASSIS). Among the six sub-scales of ASSIS, the "homesickness" mean scale score was found to be the highest (mean=3.15, SD=0.73). Acculturative stress was associated with gender (p<0.001), financial status (p<0.001) and BMI (p<0.001), but was not significantly associated with Korean language level. Because it is well known that acculturative stress can result in eating disorders, we selected subjects who stayed in a dormitory (n=138) to avoid this problem and the result showed that weight change was associated with gender (p<0.01), financial status (p<0.01), education level (p< 0.001) and BMI (p< 0.05), but was not associated with acculturative stress. The residing period since the subjects came to Korea was found to be related to weight change (p<0.001). Thus, it may suggests that the male students with higher BMI and poor financial status were more likely to have higher acculturative stress. In addition, this study revealed that the residing period since the subjects came to Korea was an important factor (R square = 13.4%) for weight change.