Chinese University Students' Intercultural Competence: Reconceptualization and Assessment

Intercultural competence (IC) is considered as an essential soft skill for successful functioning in the globalized society in the 21st century. However, there is still a lack of culturally appropriate framework and instrument to understand and assess Chinese university students' IC development. The purpose of this study was to design a valid and reliable scale for assessing Chinese students' IC. Based on the AAA (Approach-Analyze-Act)-Chinese framework, a 30-item Intercultural Competence Scale-Chinese Version (ICS-CHN) was developed and validated with confirmatory factor analysis. Subsequent multigroup confirmatory factor analysis model further proved the measurement invariance of ICS-CHN in different gender groups. Together with its adequate reliability, convergent and discriminant validity, it is reasonable to conclude that ICS-CHN is a reliable and valid scale, corroborating that IC is a combination of affective/attitudinal, cognitive and behavioral skills and characteristics applied in intercultural encounters.