A Study On The Relationship Between PhD Candidates’ Intercultural Sensitivity And Cultural Identity Anxiety

The academic research on cultural identity anxiety mainly focuses on its status quo and its relationship with cultural identification at present.Few empirical studies investigate the relationship between intercultural sensitivity and cultural identity anxiety or simply analyze their correlation.Therefore,the relationship between intercultural sensitivity and cultural identity anxiety needs to be further explored.This thesis takes PhD candidates from China University of Petroleum(East China)as participants and explores the relationship between their intercultural sensitivity and cultural identity anxiety based on the Intercultural Sensitivity Scale and Cultural Identity Anxiety questionnaire.The data of 150 valid questionnaires are sorted and analyzed in SPSS26.0.Last,a semi-structured interview is conducted with ten subjects.The results indicate:(1)PhD candidates’ overall ICS lies in the above-average level.Its five dimensions are ranked from highest to lowest: Respect for Cultural Difference,Interaction Enjoyment,Interaction Engagement,Interaction Attentiveness,and Interaction Confidence.PhD candidates’ overall CIA is lower than the moderate level.Its four dimensions are ranked from highest to lowest:Cultural Behaviors,Social Norms,Values,and Language.(2)There is a significant negative correlation between PhD candidates’ ICS and CIA.Among the five factors of ICS,Respect for Cultural Differences bears the highest correlation with CIA,followed by Interaction Enjoyment,Interaction Confidence,and Interaction Engagement,while Interaction Attentiveness bears the lowest correlation with CIA.(3)The overall ICS can significantly influence CIA.All the five dimensions of ICS show significant influence on CIA,except Interaction Attentiveness.Interaction Confidence contributes to the greatest effect.This thesis enriches the empirical research on the relationship between intercultural sensitivity and cultural identity anxiety.It provides references for the reduction of cultural identity anxiety,hoping to attract more attention to PhD candidates’ participation in intercultural communication.