Investigating higher education students’ intercultural readiness for academic mobility

The present study describes the development and initial empirical testing of a new instrument of intercultural competence. By employing this scale, Turkish Erasmus students’ intercultural sensitivity was examined at a pre-departure stage. The study also investigated whether gender, participation in pre-departure orientation activities and university type (private vs. state) had any influence on the students’ intercultural readiness. Student participants (N = 89) from two state and two private universities in Turkey were involved in the investigation. The data were analyzed using a standard set of psychometric procedures including factor and reliability analyses. For the comparative analyses, T-tests and Anova tests were conducted. Results indicated this new scale to be a reasonable approximation of students’ intercultural readiness for academic mobility. Finally, the participants were found to be quite ready for their Erasmus experience from an intercultural communicative perspective.