Intercultural sensitivity among university students: measurement of the construct and its relationship with international mobility programmes

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to validate the IDI (Intercultural Development Inventory) and to assess the impact of international mobility programmes on the intercultural sensitivity of university students. For this, a quasi-experimental study was carried out using a longitudinal design of repeated pre-test and post-test measures, with an experimental group of students who carried out international mobility programmes and a control group of students who did not. The sample consisted of 3,047 university students. The inventory yielded a five-factor structure (negation/defence, minimization, reversion, acceptance/ adaptation and encapsulated marginality) with alpha coefficients ranging from .82 to .91, revealing adequate reliability and validity. The results indicate the effectiveness of the IDI to measure intercultural sensitivity. Although the post-test scores are higher than the pre-test scores for both groups, there are significant differences in favour of the experimental group (p = .000) in all factors except the negation/defence stage. The conclusions focus on the implications of this study for curriculum development and policy at an educational level.