Differences in Interpersonal Communication Efficacy among Chinese and International Students: What are they and why do they matter?

Within Chinese societies, as in western ones, interpersonal relationships, which can also be called social relations, are one of the most important needs for human beings. Within universities, Interpersonal Communication Efficacy (ICE) has been regarded as having a direct influence on the psychological health of undergraduate students. Based upon the theory of Bandura’s self-efficacy and Xie Jing’s ICE, this article compares the extent of ICE between domestic and international students in a Chinese university. The aim is to identify the similarities and differences between the two research groups, and the implications for the stakeholders (students, teachers, policy-makers, and researchers). A case study was conducted using a questionnaire survey. By employing the methods of quantitative analysis, the questionnaires of 390 respondents were analysed by using variance analysis of SPSS software. The findings of the study reveal that Chinese students are more likely to pay attention to interpersonal communication and are more interdependent than other international students. This implies the importance of teaching communication skills, improving interpersonal communication efficacy, and understanding teaching and learning across cultures within the ongoing internationalisation of education.


Introduction
Besides information exchange, maintaining mental health is another function of interpersonal relationships (Wang, 2014). However, the problem of communication between college students has been pointed out by numerous scholars (e.g. Sun, 2004;He, 1992). Sun conducted the research into psychological consultation within colleges and universities in Shanghai, finding that 40.5 percent of the content of psychological consultation is related to interpersonal relationship, which ranks as the top psychological problem of current college students (Sun, 2004). A largescale interpersonal relationship study was carried out within eight universities in southwest of China and invited 620 college students to complete the SCL-90 scale questionnaire (He, 1992). The study shows that 48.6 percent of the respondents have obstacles in interpersonal communication to some extent. Thus, it is noted that the importance of researching interpersonal relationship efficacy should be addressed with the aim of helping to lessen the problem of mental health and communication obstacles for students. In regard to the field of education, it is worth pondering whether the interpersonal communication efficacy of students is in relation to teaching and learning for both teachers and students. It would be also beneficial for teaching across cultures to identify the differences of the Interpersonal Communication Efficacy (ICE) between domestic students and international students who study within the domestic university.
As an interdisciplinary study of education and psychology, the study is a transcendence of old paradigms, presenting transdisciplinary outcomes, that gives future researchers a suggestion for a new paradigm. The term, "interpersonal communication efficacy" has been defined in Mandarin for a decade (Xie, 2004). Much work remains to be done so as to review both the theoretical and empirical development of this term. The researcher makes a contribution to the global academia, by bringing the term into the English academic vocabulary, and making a connection for western scholars to conduct further research into this new research paradigm.
By crossing the discipline of education and psychology, the purpose of this article is to compare the extent of ICE between domestic and international students in a Chinese university and its influence variables. This has been done by identifying the similarities and differences between the two research groups within the same research context. The research questions addressed here are: • RQ1: What are the differences in Interpersonal Communication Efficacy between Chinese and international students?
• RQ2: What are the implications for the stakeholders?

Self-Efficacy
The early stages of psychological theory and empirical studies tended to pay attention to either obtaining knowledge or observing reactions, but ignored the influence between each other (Bandura, 1977). However, it is important to consider mental mechanisms in order to combine both aspects and explore the reasons for these behaviours. During this time, Bandura brought the concept of self-efficacy into the field of psychology by presenting the concept of reciprocal determinism (ibid). This concept relates to human behaviour which is decided by the mutual relations between the environment, personal cognition and some other factors ( fig  1).

Figure 1
Bandura's reciprocal determinism. Source: (Bandura, 1986) According to Bandura, the three elements (fig 1) may influence each other in different sequences, and at different times (Bandura, 1977). Nevertheless, human's thoughts and beliefs are the most influential factors. Bandura pointed out this concept of self-efficacy, in particular, and revealed the power of consciousness in personal life -the belief in selfefficacy determines the human's goal, duration of exertion and the recovery capability when facing difficulty.
The benefits of having a high level of efficacy is summarized by Bandura as, 'an affirmative sense of efficacy contributes to psychological well-being as well as to performance accomplishments' (Bandura, 1995: 12). He explains that a student with high level of efficacy is more likely to have better school performance, stronger motivation and higher goals. As Wang writes, 'individuals with high levels of efficacy feel that they can control potential environmental threats to desired outcomes and consequently attend to environmental factors to manage them' (Wang, 2014: 24). Additionally, the improvement of efficacy can lower the level of anxiety, due to the greater willingness to solve problems and perceive themselves as having high ability (Bandura, 1995).
There have been numerous studies about self-efficacy and student learning (Pajares, 1996;Chemers et al., 2001). Even though, it should be noted that Bandura's model has been critiqued through many different lenses. The methodological problem of self-efficacy theory is pointed out by Tryon who suggests that the data 'could likely be accounted for by social contingencies operating within his highly structured behavioural approach situation (Tryon, 1981: 113). William points out that the validity of selfefficacy theory might be decreased by the influence of the expected outcomes (William, 2010). The problem of its misuse in a wide variety of contexts, including education settings has also been mentioned by Bandura himself and other scholars (Bandura, 1986;Pajares, 1996;Feltzet al., 2008). As Pajares wrote, the self-efficacy research conducted through general self-efficacy assessment seeks to measure the "confidence" through an omnibus instrument (Pajares, 1996). The global scores achieved through general self-efficacy assessment decontextualise the correspondence between behaviour and self-efficacy. In that case, researchers are well advised by Bandura to make a context-specific judgement (Bandura, 1986). Within the field of education, it is critical to conduct academic self-perception assessment without identifying criterial tasks, although self-efficacy assessment in academic domain has become common (Pajares, 1996). These problems mentioned by the scholars helped the researcher to design the questionnaire with the consideration of a task specific and context specific approach.

Interpersonal Communication Efficacy
Interpersonal communication is the process of information exchange and emotion communication of people used by language signals or non-verbal signal in social activities. Its importance lies in the fact that human being cannot survive without society. Individuals live in a social group and establish distinct contact, of which interaction and relationship are built. Interpersonal communication is, thus, not only the bond by which interpersonal relationship are maintained and developed but the very foundation of certain social psychological phenomena such as public opinion, morale and fashion. It is also the requirement of individual's development. It is the behaviour of continual communication, idea dissemination and information absorption that enables human being to achieve individual development.
There are numerous studies of the impact of interpersonal communication on learners (Al-mehsin, 2017; Eid, 2012; Yousuf, 2013; Yedidia et al., 2003). The study of Al-mehsin aimed at examining the contribution of social skills and self-efficacy to the process of decision-making confirmed a positive correlation both between self-efficacy and the quality of decision-making and between social skills and the quality of decisionmaking among students in a Saudi Arabian university (Al-mehsin, 2017). A research was conducted in three American medical schools aiming to determine whether the interpersonal communication has an impact on medical students' competency and performance (Yedidia et al., 2003). The authors reported that the communication skills of medical students were found to be related to medical students' performance skills and outcomes of care, addressing the necessity of integrating the teaching of communication skills into the school curriculum. Cleland, Foster and Moffat conducted a study of medical students' attitudes towards communication skills learning at the University of Aberdeen in the UK and confirmed greater differences in communication skills teaching by gender and year of study (Cleland et al., 2005).
The idea of interpersonal communication efficacy was firstly pointed out by Xie in 2004, but only within China (Xie, 2004). Xie as summarised six dimensions of Interpersonal Communication Efficacy which is the foundation of this research, by conducting a large-scale research of 700 college students in five Chinese universities in Taiyuan City (Xie, 2004). According to Xie, the concept of Interpersonal Communication Efficacy can be understood from six principal sources of information: • Group efficacy refers to the perception on the individual ability when completing a specific collective task (Gibson, 1999); • Self-image efficacy is defined as the perception on 'self', which may be linked to personal attributes, inclinations, abilities and powers (Harr'e, 1998).
• Altruistic Efficacy enables people to easily gain others trust and make friends; • Communication Efficacy enables people to be highly confident and sensitive in the process of information exchange; • 'Self-worth Efficacy refers to the personal judgement of one's self, a subjective evaluation and a sense of self-respect (Sheldon and colleagues cited in Wang, 2014); • Sentiment-control Efficacy is a socialised feeling, which is 'raised by thought and intercourse out of its merely instinctive state and become properly human. It implies imagination, and the medium in which it chiefly lives is sympathetic contact with the minds of others' (Cooley, 1962: 177).
However, it should be noted that the research generalisation is hindered by the limited scope of the research context; it is only generalisable to certain education settings. Meanwhile, within the study, there is a research bias caused by the imbalanced proportions of the respondents in grades and disciplines. Regardless, the six dimensions mentioned by Xie can be utilised as a reference to conduct research on interpersonal communication efficacy.
Until 2019, there were 39 studies of the ICE in China, even though the term has not been translated into English. Based upon the theory of Xie, Wang conducted a comparative research into interpersonal communication efficacy between Chinese and American students, aiming to identify the differences of interpersonal communication between two research groups (Wang, 2014). 305 undergraduate students in three Chinese universities in Shanghai and 293 America students in American universities participated the questionnaire survey. The study found that compared with Chinese students, American students are more likely to show selfinterest in interpersonal communication. And because the data from the Chinese group was generated from only three Shanghai universities the findings may be skewed, and therefore, the findings are less generalisable to certain contexts. The theoretical definition of Interpersonal Communication Efficacy is given by Wang, "Interpersonal Communication Efficacy is a subjective judgement on whether an individual can reach a communication goal or not. It occurs before communication happens, and is an efficacy prediction on whether an individual can accomplish a goal or not" (Wang, 2014: 23).
According to Wang, a high ICE enables students to have confidence in their ability to communicate interpersonally, and to finish tasks that are both skilled and challenging. On the contrary, low ICE will lead to a lack of confidence; hence, students are more likely to select highly simple tasks so as to make sure they succeed.

Methodology
The university where this research took place is among the top 30 university in the Chinese university ranking system. Located in Shanghai, it is a comprehensive research university which covers the disciplines of art, science, medicine, business, agriculture among other disciplines. The university pays attention to the development of international communication and has established a wide and deep relationship with over 200 universities including in America, Germany, UK and France. It has become international partners with many of those universities, by which students and teachers are able to work on exchange.
The research focused on identifying the differences and similarities in Interpersonal Relationship Efficacy between domestic and foreign students in the research university. A case study was adopted by utilising the questionnaire survey (see Appendix  students were 80 percent and 73.5 percent respectively. Data was analysed using variance analysis of SPSS.

No Remarkable Difference of ICE in Gender
Variance analysis was utilised to examine the difference in Interpersonal Communication Efficacy between male and female respondents. According to Table 3 The descriptive analysis and homogeneity test of variance was used to further identify whether differences exist within the six dimensions of the questionnaire. G.E., AL.E., C.E., W.E., I.E., S.E. within the tables mean Group Efficacy, Altruistic Efficacy, Communication Efficacy, Self-worth Efficacy, Self-image Efficacy, and Sentiment-control Efficacy respectively. As Sheldon and colleagues. wrote, 'Self-worth Efficacy refers to the personal judgement of one's self, a sense of self-respect and a subjective evaluation' (see Wang, 2014 The different extent of ICE in six dimensions may also be found in Table 6. The result of Mean indicates that among the six dimensions, Self-worth Efficacy and Self-image Efficacy had the lowest score whereas the Altruistic Efficacy gained the highest score.

No Remarkable Difference of ICE in Grade
The similarity and difference of ICE in grade was also tested, using the variance analysis. The study of shows that there are remarkable differences of Interpersonal Communication Efficacy in grade (Wang, 2014). Cleland, Foster and Moffat also claim that, among medical students at the University of Aberdeen in the UK, first year and final year students are more likely to think communication skills important (Cleland et al., 2005). However, within this study, the sig. of grade is 0.516, shows that there is no remarkable difference in grade. As mentioned above, the sig. of gender is 0.987; it can be seen from the Table 3 and Table 7 that, the sig. of grade is lower than that of gender. This means that compared with gender, the grade may have a greater influence on ICE. The descriptive analysis and homogeneity test of variance was utilised to compare the results of Chinese and international students regarding the difference of ICE in grade. The tables show that the sig. of Chinese students is higher than that of international students. It reveals that although there is no big difference in grades, the results of the ICE of Chinese students is more likely to vary with grades than those of international students. Lu. Exchanges 2019 6(2), pp. 64-85

Remarkable Differences of ICE in Discipline
Consistent with the findings of Wang (Wang, 2014), this study shows that there are remarkable differences across disciplines, since the sig. of discipline is 0.389. According to the result of the Descriptive Analysis and Homogeneity Test of Variance, the extent of Interpersonal Communication Efficacy of students in the discipline of Humanities is higher than those of students in the discipline of Science and Arts.

Conclusions
This article has aimed to compare the extent of Interpersonal Communication Efficacy (ICE) between domestic and international students in a Chinese university, and its influence variables. By combining the theory of self-efficacy with interpersonal communication, the researcher compared the ICE in different grades, gender and disciplines. By crossing the discipline of psychology and education, the findings reveal the importance of distributing communication skills lessons, paying different attention to the individuals with various personal backgrounds, and improving students' interpersonal communication ability.
The study has demonstrated that the general ICE of male and female respondents has no remarkable difference. Among the six dimensions of ICE, the Self-worth Efficacy and Self-image Efficacy had the lowest score whereas the Altruistic Efficacy gained the highest score. This addresses to the importance of building students' confidence. There is no remarkable difference between Sentiment-control Efficacy and Self-image Efficacy. However, the different extent of efficacy between male and female students within the Self-worth Efficacy, Group Efficacy, Altruistic Efficacy, and Communication Efficacy can be found in the research. The influence of grade on ICE is bigger than the influence of gender, although in general, the ICE of different grades has no remarkable difference. Also, the results of the ICE of Chinese students is more likely to vary with grades than those of international students.
There are noteworthy differences in disciplines within Chinese or international students; the extent of ICE of students in the discipline of Humanities is higher than those of students in the discipline of Science and Arts. The extents of Sentiment Control Efficacy and Altruistic Efficacy are the highest, whereas the Self-worth Efficacy is the lowest. This study reveals that Chinese students are more likely to pay attention to interpersonal communication and are more interdependent than those of international students, implying the importance of the understanding of cultural difference and addressing different needs of individuals when teaching. As Rogers and Kincaid claim, compared to the interpersonal communication in the West which is psychological, goal-oriented, and linear, interpersonal communication in the Asian Chinese context is social, collective, and cyclical (Rogers and Kincaid, 1981). The findings are consistent with the two previous authors (Yum, 1988;Rogers and Kincard, 1981), indicating that the different cultural understandings of 'interpersonal' are crucial. This draws attention to the need for cultural awareness with regard to the ongoing internationalization of education, helping both teachers and students to understand teaching and learning across cultures.
Meanwhile, the importance of improving ICE is addressed. ICE can be considered as an evaluation way to help the students who have interpersonal relationship problem. For example, within this research, the interpersonal communication of students in the discipline of Science and Arts may need to be paid more attention by teachers and parents. This study addresses the importance of communication skills teaching and suggests that teachers should consider the factors of the year of study, gender, cultural backgrounds when teaching students across cultures.
The limitation of the study is that the efficacy test is a process of selfassessment which may cause bias. The results should be combined with the perception of surrounding people. As Wang argues, "…frequent reference is made to the characteristics of self but, since most research is conducted through self-assessment, one of the problems regards the extent to which the individual's self-beliefs coincide with characteristics that are actually possessed." (Wang, 2014: 25).
Likewise, the findings of the study are only generalisable to certain research contexts, addressing the importance of context-specific viewpoint of social-science research.
The implication for stakeholders, is that it demonstrates that teachers may need to employ different strategies to communicate with students across cultures. Teaching students with different cultures and backgrounds through various approaches can also be used by teachers as an effective pedagogy. For the policy-makers or school and university leaders, the knowledge of communication skills and the awareness of cultural differences can be designed into the curriculum. There should be designed more teaching lessons on communication skills for students with different backgrounds (years of study, gender, cultural background). With the ongoing internationalization of education, it is hoped that more research and publications should be done by researchers with the aim of identifying the differences of interpersonal communication across cultures. Much work remains to be done so as to review both the theoretical and empirical development of the term, interpersonal communication efficacy. The research findings achieved through self-assessment may cause research bias, and therefore, instead of only doing self-assessment, more research methods and strategies should be used to conduct the research and avoid bias.