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Portland State University PDXScholar Dissertations and Theses Dissertations and Theses 1-1-2010 Investing and Vesting International Students' Expressive Resources in Social Capital at Portland State University Mami Kikuchi Portland State University Follow this and additional works at: https://pdxscholar.edu/open_access_etds Let us know how access to this document benefits you. Recommended Citation Kikuchi, Mami, "Investing and Vesting International Students' Expressive Resources in Social Capital at Portland State University" (2010). Dissertations and Theses.130 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of PDXScholar.

Please contact us if we can make this document more accessible: pdxscholar@pdx. Investing and Vesting International Students’ Expressive Resources in Social Capital at Portland State University by Mami Kikuchi A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Master of Arts in Communication Thesis Committee: Cynthia-Lou Coleman, Chair Priya Kapoor Yves Labissiere Portland State University ©2010 ABSTRACT The study expands the conceptual and methodological precepts of social capital by examining how international students receive social capital from their friends and how students provide social capital to their friends in a North American university setting. The author examines the degree of emotional support that the participants provide (“Investing” social capital) and the support they receive from their friends (“Vesting” social capital), and the relationships between the two social capital variables. In addition, the study examines the influence of demographics and social interaction on social capital, and the influence of social capital on satisfaction.

The study suggests that vesting and investing in social capital are correlated, and that giving and receiving social capital are influenced by social interactions with friends. However, social capital offered no significant contribution to satisfaction. i DEDICATION To my moms, Shizuko Kikuchi and Norma Gordon ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First, I would like to thank all the international students who participated in my survey. I know you are all busy studying, but took some time to do me a favor.

Without your cooperation, my study would not have been completed. I would like to thank Dr. Cynthia-Lou Coleman. You taught me the joy of “digging deep” using my own brain instead of taking knowledge for granted.

I learned the bliss of conducting research from you. Gently but steadily, you have been pushing my back to keep learning and writing. I also would like to thank Dr. Priya Kapoor and Dr.

Yves Labissiere for providing wonderful feedback and inspiring me to expand my ideas and thoughts. I thank my family and friends in Japan and Australia, and the United States. You always patiently believed in me that I could go through this long term project. I thank all of my friends at Portland State University for helping me to survive in this academic journey.

Many of you also gave me insightful feedback during my pilot study. I want to say thank you to Yoichi Sato and Dr. Masami Nishishiba who encouraged me to go through the graduate program. Without their advice, I would not have even started.

I have special thanks for my thesis buddy, Celeste Moser. My thesis iii work suddenly started rolling since we began to meet regularly to chat about our progress. Your support, encouragement, and big smile always hearten me. I owe another special thanks to my study mate, Yachiyo Iisako.

I cannot count how many cups of coffee we drank while studying together almost every night. You cheerfully prompted me whenever I got tired and scared of making progress. Of course, I have to also thank the wonderful coffee shop Palio in South East Portland, where I spent countless study hours for the last few years. Last but not least, I would like to thank my husband, Russ Gordon.

Thank you for always standing by me. You believed in me and believed that I could complete my graduate program even when I myself did not believe so. Without your love, support, patience, and incredible proofreading skill, I would never finish this process. Through my thesis about social capital, I re-discovered that I have a wonderful social capital of my own, and that is the best outcome of this long term project.

iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT. iii LIST OF TABLES. viii LIST OF FIGURES. xi CHAPTER 1 Literature Review.

1 Social Capital: History of the Concept. 2 Categorization of Social Capital. 5 Social Capital Research in the Communication Discipline. 14 Social Capital Explication.

24 Definition of Social Capital in the Current Study. 27 CHAPTER 2 International Student Overview. 38 New Social Capital in the U. 39 Common Issues among International Students.

40 Needs for Social Capital. 43 CHAPTER 3 Research Questions. 52 v Research Design Overview. 52 Population of the Study: Participants Criteria.

55 Pilot Study: Feedback from Colleagues. 56 Socializing with Friends. 57 Emotional Support from Friends. 59 Life Satisfaction at Portland State University.

61 Emotional Support from the Participant to friends. 67 Country of Origin. 71 Length of Residence at Portland State University. 73 Comfort Level in English.

77 Relationship among Independent Variables. 79 Socializing with Friends. 79 Satisfaction with Life at Portland State University. 83 Emotional Support from Friends.

83 Emotional Support from the Participant. 86 Relationship between Friends Support and Participant Support. 88 Relationship between Socializing with Friends and Friends Support. 90 Relationship between Socializing with Friends and Participant Support.

96 vi Life Satisfaction and Friends Support. 100 Life Satisfaction and Participant Support. 103 Post Hoc Analysis. 105 Differences in the Gap between Participant Support and Friends Support.

109 Friends Support: Vesting Expressive Resources. 111 Participant Support: Investing Expressive Resources. 112 Relationship between Investing and Vesting Expressive Resources. 113 Gap between Investing and Vesting Expressive Resources.

115 Socializing with Friends and Social Capital. 117 Life Satisfaction and Social Capital. 119 Contributions to the Body of Literature. 121 Perceived Expressive Resources.

122 Implication of the Current Study to International Students. 123 Inconsistency of Communication Based Emotional Support Scales. 125 Limitations and Future Prospects. Approval of Human Subject Application.

Invitation Letter for Survey. Reminder of the Survey. Survey for Friendship of International Students. 145 vii LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Participants’ Countries of Origins.

69 Table 2: Number of Housemates. 72 Table 3: Living Arrangements. 72 Table 4: Comfort level in English. 74 Table 5: Frequency of Socializing with Friends.

81 Table 6: Life Satisfaction. 82 Table 7: Friends Support. 84 Table 8: Participant Support. 87 Table 9: Socializing with Friends Independent Sample t-tests.

92 Table 10: Friends Support Independent Sample t-tests. 93 Table 11: Predictors of Friends Support. 95 Table 12: Participant Support Independent Sample t-tests. 98 Table 13: Predictors of Participant Support.

99 viii Table 14: Life Satisfaction Independent Sample t-tests. 101 Table 15: Predictors of Life Satisfaction (1). 103 Table 16: Predictors of Life Satisfaction (2). 104 Table 17: Paired Samples t-test: Participant and Friends Support by Country of Origin.

108 ix LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Pearson Correlations between Variables. 110 x PREFACE During my graduate coursework, I interviewed a Japanese friend. She lost her American husband rather abruptly several years prior to the interview. A middle aged full-time housewife with very limited English skills (her husband spoke Japanese), she was unexpectedly forced to raise three children alone.

During the interview, I found that a support network of her friends, her deceased husband’s friends and coworkers, children’s friends’ mothers, and neighbors had been helping her and her children. They helped her through selling and downsizing the house, dealing with government paperwork, providing a job for her, etc. Meanwhile, she had been helping her friends, too. For example, when one of her friends was diagnosed with cancer, she and others took turns cooking for the friend and her family over the course of several months.

She also baby-sat and dog-sat frequently for her friends and neighbors. She lived in a reciprocal circle of friendship and mutual help. This interview inspired me to think about friendship and social networks as a social device for survival. It guided me to social capital theory which considers social relationships as assets for individuals and communities.

xi As an immigrant, I am curious how people survive in a new environment. I am thrilled that my academic inquiry and personal quest meet each other in my Master’s thesis. xii Chapter 1 LITERATURE REVIEW Considering personal relationships to be assets is not innovative or novel, but this conventional “street wisdom” is the core idea of social capital. Yet in academic circles, the idea of examining relationships from this perspective received only minor attention until Bourdieu (1986) and Coleman (1990) started to develop the theory about two decades ago.

Social capital has recently become a popular term, but the conceptualizations (meanings) and operationalizations (measurements) of the term tend to vary depending on which element of the concept is being emphasized. In this chapter, I will discuss how the concept of social capital has been developed in the communication discipline and other fields. I start with the historical unfolding of the theory and recent popularizations of the term. After explaining how scholars categorized the concept, I will shift to a discussion of how the concept has been adapted to the communication field.

I then add my working definition of social capital. 1 Social Capital: History of the Concept The term “social capital” can be traced to the beginning of the 20th Century when Lyda Judson Hanifan, an educator in West Virginia, used the term in 1916 to stress that community cooperation is essential to operate a successful school (Putnam, 2000, p. Hanifan defined social capital as “those tangible substances that count for most in the daily lives of people: namely goodwill, fellowship, sympathy, and social intercourse among the individuals and families who make up a social unit” (Hanifan, 1916, p. The concept was revitalized years later by two sociologists, Pierre Bourdieu (1986) and James S.

Bourdieu and Coleman each developed distinct yet overlapping conceptualizations of social capital. Bourdieu (1986) focused on how an individual’s social relationships (e., family, school, clubs, etc.) produce access to resources. Bourdieu reasoned that social capital is determined by two elements: “the size of the network of connections” available to the individual, and “the volume of the capital (economic, cultural or symbolic)” of each member within the network (p. That is, Bourdieu emphasized the network and resources within the network.

2 Coleman took a slightly different approach to social capital, linking individual action with self-interest. Coleman considered social capital the result of individuals’ rational choices to achieve personal interests. As a result, he regarded social capital as both a compound of social relations (networks) and a consequence of social relations (including trust). Coleman focused on outcomes of social capital, noting “social capital is productive, making possible the achievement of certain ends that would not be attainable in its absence” (Coleman, 1990, p.

Social Capital Erosion in the United States While the sociology scholars had been refining and polishing social capital theory in their discipline, political scientist Robert D. Putnam popularized the term with the publication of his 2000 book, Bowling Alone. Viewing social capital as the linchpin to well-functioning, democratic and healthy communities, Putnam defined social capital as “connections among individual’s—social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them” (Putnam, 2000, p. According to Putnam, social capital in the United States has been drastically eroding for the last several decades, as individuals eschew community-based activities 3 (such as bowling teams) for more individually oriented pursuits (such as surfing the Internet).