Antecedents of students intention to study abroad higher education an empirical research in viet nam

UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY International School of Business Lê Thị Hồng An ANTECEDENTS OF STUDENTS’ INTENTION TO STUDY ABROAD IN HIGHER EDUCATIO AN EMPIRICAL RESEARCH IN VIETNAM MASTER OF BUSINESS (Honours) Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2014 UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY International School of Business Lê Thị Hồng An ANTECEDENTS OF STUDENTS’ INTENTION TO STUDY ABROAD IN HIGHER EDUCATIO AN EMPIRICAL RESEARCH IN VIETNAM ID: 22120041 MASTER OF BUSINESS (Honours) SUPPERVISOR: DR LE NGUYEN HAU Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2014 Acknowledgements I would like to express my gratitude to my supervisor - Dr Le Nguyen Hau, who has given me great guidance, valuable advice, suggestions that helping me in implementing this study I would also like to express my sincere thanks to ISB Research Council who gave valuable recommendations throughout my thesis’s periods as well as all professors, tutors and officers of ISB - MBus Program for academic knowledge and assistance throughout the program at International School of Business Last but not least, I am grateful to Principals, Vice Principals and teachers at Saigon International College, Nguyen Thuong Hien high school, Le Quy Don high school and Gia Dinh high school for their advice and support in collecting the information Without their support, I could not complete my thesis Thank you, Le Thi Hong An i Table of content List of Tables iv List of Figures .v ABBREVIATIONS vi ABSTRACT CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 RESEARCH BACKGROUND .2 1.1.1 Studying abroad in higher education in Vietnam .2 1.1.2 Existing studies about factors that impact on study oversea intention 1.2 RESEARCH OBJECTIVE 1.3 SCOPE OF THE RESEARCH 1.4 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY 1.5 THESIS’S ORGANIZATION CHAPTER 2: LITERATURES REVIEW AND HYPOTHESES 2.1 LITERATURES REVIEW 2.1.1 An overview about the Theory of Planned Behavior .9 2.1.2 Intention 11 2.1.3 Attitude toward the behavior 12 2.1.4 Subjective norm 13 2.1.5 Perceived behavioral control 14 2.2 RESEARCH MODEL 15 2.3 HYPOTHESES .16 2.4 SUMMARY 16 CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHOD 17 3.1 RESEARCH PROCEDURE 17 3.2 RESEARCH DESIGN 19 3.2.1 Measurement Scales 19 3.2.2 Selection of Method Research .22 3.2.3 Measurement Refinement .23 3.2.4 Questionnaire Design 24 3.3 MAIN STUDY AND DATA COLLECTION .24 3.3.1 3.3.2 Sampling and sample .24 Data analysis 25 ii CHAPTER 4: DATA ANALYSIS AND RESULTS 27 4.1 DATA STATISTICAL ANALYSIS 27 4.2 MEASUREMENT SCALES ASSESSMENT 28 4.2.1 Reliability Test 28 4.2.2 Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) 31 4.2.3 Correlation 35 4.2.4 Adjusted Model And Hypotheses 37 4.3 HYPOTHESES TESTING 38 4.3.1 Assumption of Multiple Regression 38 4.3.2 Hypotheses testing 39 4.4 DISCUSSION .42 4.5 SUMMARY 43 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSIONS AND LIMITATIONS 45 5.1 MAIN FINDINGS 45 5.2 IMPLICATIONS 46 5.2.1 Managerial implication 46 5.2.2 Theoretical implications 47 5.3 LIMITATIONS 47 5.4 CONCLUSION .48 REFERENCES 49 APPENDICES 52 Appendix A: Questionnaire (Vietnamese Version) 52 Appendix B: Questionnaire (English Version) 55 Appendix C: KMO and Bartlett's Test for Independent variables 58 Appendix D: Cronbach’s alpha Test for AIPI construct 58 Appendix E: Cronbach’s alpha Test for AIPP construct 59 Appendix F: KMO and Bartlett's Test for dependent variable 59 ii List of Tables Table 3.2: Measurement scales 20 Table 4-1: Data descriptive statistics 27 Table 4-2: Cronbach’s Alpha coefficients for each measurement scale 29 Table 4-3: Cronbach’ Alpha results after excluding unsatisfactory items 30 a Table 4-4: Rotated Component Matrix 32 Table: 4-5: Total Variance Explained of independent variables 33 Table 4-6: Total Variance Explained of dependent variable .34 Table 4-7: Representative variables .35 Table 4-8: Correlations between variables 36 Table 4-9: Hypotheses testing result (Model Summary, ANOVA, Coefficients) 39 List of Figures Figure 2.1: The theory of planned behavior (Ajzen, 1991) 11 Figure 2.2: Research model 16 Figure 3.2: Research procedure .18 Figure 4.6: Adjusted model 37 ABBREVIATIONS ELICOS: English Language Intensive Courses for Overseas Students VET: Vocational Education and Training TPB: Theory of Planned Behavior TRA: Theory of Reasoned Action ANOVA: Analysis Of Variance EFA: Explored Factor Analysis KMO: Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin SPSS: Statistical Package for Social Science ABSTRACT Higher education has become an increasingly competitive sector for developed foreign education The number of countries that are actively involved in international student recruitment has grown considerably It is important to gain a better understanding of the factors that influencing on intention to study overseas The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of key antecedents on intention of studying abroad in tertiary education of high school students in the context of Vietnam After pilot study, a quantitative research was utilized with a sample of 289 students in some high schools in Ho Chi Minh City The Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) was used as a framework to understand the intention to study abroad Results indicate that the influences of attitude toward foreign education, advices of influential people and perceive behavioral control play significant role in predicting intention to study abroad of high school students Overall, the results of this study may help foreign education institutions develop a good understanding of Vietnamese students’ behavior in selecting an institution for studying in English – speaking countries Keywords: intention, theory of planned behavior, study abroad, higher education, Vietnamese students CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION Chapter I introduces a background and an overview of studying abroad in higher education in Vietnam as well as existing studies about factors that impact on study oversea intention The Introduction also specifies the research objectives, scope of this study and significance of the research Chapter I also provides an overview of all chapters that will be presented in this paper 1.1 RESEARCH BACKGROUND 1.1.1 Studying abroad in higher education in Vietnam According to the Ministry of Education and Training (MoET), over 100,000 Vietnamese students are studying abroad in 47 countries and territories Among them, about 90% is self-funded study Viet Nam has become a productive market for international institutions (Vietnamnet, 2013) International education is a growing export industry for many developed countries The US’ Open Doors 2011 report showed that the number of Vietnamese students in the country increased by 14% during the 2010-2011 academic year Vietnam ranks eighth among countries and territories sending students to the US, a considerable increase compared to the 20th place five years ago and around 72.1% of Vietnamese students in the US pursued tertiary education More and more Vietnamese apply for studying at the schools in the United States, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Singapore and so on The list of the destination countries for Vietnamese students has been expanded (Dantri, 2012) A report of Australian Education International (2014) stated that following China and India, Vietnam is currently the third largest international student source market for Australia Among the higher education, ELICOS, VET and school sectors, the proportion of higher education sector is high with 44% CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSIONS AND LIMITATIONS 5.1 MAIN FINDINGS Finding 1: All of the prediction variables comprising Attitude toward the foreign education, Advice of influential people (Subjective Norm), and Perceived Behavioral Control were found to be positive predictors of intention study abroad and statistically significant at varying strengths This supports past researches about the same topic such as Bobbitt & Akers (2013) indicated that approximately 54% of the variance in intent to study abroad in the sample can be accounted for by the linear combination of TPB constructs; the research of Li et al., (2009) found that this study has found that TPB could be well applied in China to predict potential students’ enrollment intention towards an offshore program although the effect of the three predictive components on intention is contingent on which country the offshore program is from ; Chen & Zimitat (2006) state that Attitude, Subjective Norm and PBC were predictors of Taiwanese students’ intention to study in English speaking such as Australia, USA However the greatest predictors of the intention to study are different in each country Finding 2: Subjective norm divided into two groups: advice of important people (parents, relative and teachers) and friends (peers and Alumni) In which standardised beta weight of advice of important people (β=.243) bigger than peers (β=.237) This means role of parents is essential This finding did not perform in the previous researches Finding 3: Among of the three independent variables, the Perceived behavioral control construct had a strongest relationship with the Intention (β=.237) This is an interesting finding compared to some previously research As detailed, Bobbitt & Akers (2013) did a study with undergraduates in the College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources at Texas Tech University and a study of Li et al., (2009) in China found that the students’ attitude toward studying abroad was the most important linear predictor of their intention to study abroad A research of Chen & Zimitat (2006) with Taiwanese students showed that greatest predictor of intention study abroad to Australia is Attitude and the most important predictor of intention study abroad to USA is Subjective Norm Finding 4: With the R square =.465 (≠ 0) and Adjusted R square =.454 and p = 000 the model-fit of this study is acceptable 5.2 IMPLICATIONS 5.2.1 Managerial implication This study applies the Theory of Planned Behavior to better understand the role of antecedents leading to intention to study oversea In managerial implication aspect, from the findings, the study had a positive contribution in practice this study may help foreign education institutions in English – speaking countries develop a good understanding of Vietnamese students’ behavior in selection an institute Hence, these institutes can improve their business performance in Vietnam market First, Vietnamese students study abroad because they believe that foreign education in English - speaking is developed, thus the foreign degrees are valuable worldwide From the view, institutes need emphasize on their academic achievements such as the ranking, the benefits of opening new career opportunities (Bobbitt & Akers, 2013) Second, the advice of parents, teachers play significant roles, marketing and communication strategy should focus on parents as well as approach high schools Besides, developing a strong alumni network could be a valuable source of referral for institutes with consideration family and friends’ recommendation And last, perceived behavioral control has an important play in predicting the intention This means if students have sufficient resources to undertake particular behavior, they are likely to form a strong intention Therefore, supports of the government in financial aid such as partial scholarships for outstanding students, part-time jobs policies will attract Vietnamese students 5.2.2 Theoretical implications The study has contributed a scientific literature in the study abroad industry The construction of a theoretical model describes the impact of attitude toward foreign education, advice of influential people and perceived behavior control on intention to study abroad in Vietnam market The study has explored some different in the measurement scales from previous research The theoretical model has also adjusted for the context of Vietnam 5.3 LIMITATIONS While contributing valuable information in predicting the intention study abroad of Vietnamese high school student in higher education, this study has a number of limitations First, this study applied the TPB completely as Knabe (2012) identified that one of these limitations may lie in the Theory of Planned Behavior itself When used as conceptualized by Ajzen, the Theory of Planned Behavior does not factor in personality, emotions and demographic variables Ajzen (1988) says these variables can be accounted for in the theory if (and only if) they influence the underlying beliefs that determine the Attitude toward and Subjective Norms This study used measurement scales from prior research These scales were used in many countries, but not in Vietnam They were tested and modified before using them to examine empirical study However, the sample for qualitative research is very small; the author just implemented the interview with interviewees Thus, the modifications were not generalized Another is the actual measures of Attitude, Perceived Subject Norms, Perceived Behavioral Control and Behavioral Intention These measures are indirect because actual observations of these behaviors are not feasible As the sample size for main survey is small and mainly focusing on students in Ho Chi Minh city with convenient sampling, the findings may not be represented whole students in Vietnam who intention to study oversea There is a limitation in data collection, because the information was collected only from high schools This is small number in comparison with appropriate 200 high schools in Ho Chi Minh City Thence, the study did not put the impact of income and occupation into the model; the influences of these antecedents were not examined Because of lack of experience in EFA analyzing, the author tested independent variables and dependent variable separately Thus, the validity of scales cannot be done in the correlation between independent and dependent variables And the last limitation, although Theory of Planned Behavior constructs predict behavioral intention, there are many factors that should be explored to fully understand the intention to study abroad of Vietnamese students 5.4 CONCLUSION This study explores the impact of theory of planned behavior constructs in predicting behavioral intention The findings indicate four groups of factors that influencing on intention to study abroad comprising attitude toward foreign education; advice of parents, relative, teachers, and peers and perceived behavior control The research also explored perceived behavioral control plays significant impact on study broad intention; following is Advice of influential peopleimportant people The findings may contribute a theoretical model for further studies and may help foreign institutes in English-speaking counties to understand intention behavioral in study abroad industry in emerging market such as Vietnam REFERENCES AEI (2014) Exhibition inforamtion Kit Ho Chi Minh City: AEI Vietnam Ajzen, I (1991) The Theory of Planned Behavior Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 179-211 Ajzen, I (2006) Constructing A Theory Of Planned Behavior Questionnaire 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accountid=63189 APPENDICES Appendix A: Questionnaire (Vietnamese Version) PHIẾU KHẢO SÁT Chào bạn, Tôi tên Lê Thị Hồng An, làm Luận văn cho khóa học Cao Học trường Đại học Kinh tế Tp.HCM với đề tài “Các nhân tố tác động đến ý định du học bậc Đại Học quốc gia nói tiếng Anh học sinh Việt Nam” Rất mong bạn dành khoảng phút để nói lên quan điểm phát biểu đề cập Phiếu khảo sát Ý kiến bạn đóng góp vai trị quan trọng cho thành cơng nghiên cứu Phiếu khảo sát dựa tinh thần tự nguyện thơng tin cá nhân bạn giữ bí mật hồn tồn Chú thích: Trong phạm vi nghiên cứu này, cụm từ “các quốc gia nói tiếng Anh” đề cập để quốc gia sử dụng tiếng Anh ngôn ngữ mẹ đẻ Anh, Úc, Mỹ PHẦN A Phần thể phát biểu liên quan đến việc học tập đại học nước ngồi Vui lịng cho biết mức độ đồng ý bạn với phát biểu sau cách đánh dấu vào tương ứng, với: 1-Hồn tồn khơng đồng ý 4-Đồng ý 2-Khơng đồng ý 3-Khơng có ý kiến 5-Hồn tồn đồng ý Xin vui lịng cho biết mức độ đồng ý/ không đồng ý bạn phát biểu việc học tập Mức Đạiđộ họcđồng ýq 1- Hồn tồn khơng đồng ý 5- Hoàn toàn đồng Học tập quốc gia nói tiếng Anh nâng cao khả Anh ngữ Danh tiếng học thuật trường Đại học quốc gia nói tiếng Anh cao so với trường ĐH Việt Nam Bằng cấp quốc gia nói tiếng Anh có giá trị so với cấp Việt Nam Thành tựu cao nghiên cứu khoa học quốc gia nói tiếng Anh yếu tố thu hút quan tâm tơi Học tập quốc gia nói tiếng Anh, tơi có hội làm việc nước sau tốt nghiệp Bằng cấp quốc tế mở rộng hội nghề nghiệp tôi trở Việt Nam Bằng cấp quốc tế giúp tơi có cơng việc với mức lương cao Ảnh hưởng người xung quanh đến ý định du học bạn (trong phạm vi chọn trường, chọn quốc gia để du học) Ba mẹ tơi có ảnh hưởng lớn đến việc tơi học đại học đâu Các thành viên khác gia đình (anh, chị…) có ảnh hưởng lớn việc học đại học đâu 10 Lời khuyên giáo viên trường THPT có ảnh hưởng việc học đại học đâu 11 Ý kiến bạn bè tơi có ảnh hưởng việc tơi học đại học đâu 12 Nhận xét cựu du học sinh việc du học trường ảnh hưởng việc tơi học đại học đâu 13 Có thể tơi học trường nơi mà bạn bè/người thân học (hoặc học) Khả kiểm soát yếu tố ảnh hưởng đến ý định du học 14 Học phí yếu tố quan trọng chọn trường đại học để du học 15 Sinh hoạt phí yếu tố quan trọng chọn nơi để du học 16 Độ dài khóa học yếu tố quan trọng chọn trường để du học (Chú thích: Ở nước có giáo dục phát triển Anh, Mỹ, Úc, chương trình ĐH năm năm tùy theo trường ) 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 17 Yếu tố thuận tiện việc trì liên hệ thường xuyên với người thân quan trọng du học nước ngoài.( du học sinh học quốc gia gần Việt Nam thuận lợi việc thăm gia đình gia đình dễ dàng thăm du học sinh) 18 Tơi nghĩ tơi gặp khó khăn giao tiếp khác biệt ngơn ngữ tơi du học 19 Việc thi tuyển vào ĐH uy tín/danh tiếng Việt Nam cạnh tranh nên muốn du học (Chú thích: Đa số ngành học trường ĐH quốc gia Anh, Mỹ, Úc thường xét tuyển, không thi tuyển) Đánh giá mức độ ý định du học 20 Tôi xem xét việc du học 21 Việc xin du học điều quan tâm 22 Tôi mong đợi du học 23 Tôi cố gắng để du học tương lai 24 Tôi dự định du học 25 Gia đình bắt buộc tơi du học 5 1 1 1 2 2 2 3 3 3 4 4 4 5 5 5 PHẦN B – Thông tin cá nhân Các bạn vui lịng cung cấp số thơng tin sau để phục vụ cho việc phân loại so sách nhóm đối tượng khảo sát: Giới tính (của người tham gia khảo sát) < Nam; < Nữ Lĩnh vực làm việc ba mẹ (người tạo thu nhập cho gia đình): < Tổ chức/Cơ quan Nhà nước < Tổ chức/Doanh nghiệp tư nhân < Tổ Chức/Doanh nghiệp đầu tư nước ngoài/ Liên doanh < Chủ doanh nghiệp < Hộ kinh doanh < Khác Thu nhập (TN) trung bình ba mẹ (triệu đồng/tháng) (người tạo thu nhập cho gia đình) < TN