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The present research explores the sociocultural adjustment of international students and the role played by university structures in the process. The adjustment process of international students has been modelled in psychological literature as a U-curve, a learning curve and most recently as a long, uneven and unending process of change. Yet, little of the literature has addressed the role played in this process by university structures. The research was conducted in the UK with 58 undergraduates from Malaysia. It utilized a qualitative design and consisted of two waves of semi-structured small-group interviews. It was found that university structures, in the form of accommodation provision, course provision, and student union clubs and societies, provide opportunities for integration and adjustment support in the early stages of the sojourn. However, the desire for contact with a wide range of others, central to the adjustment process, takes time to develop in international students. It is suggested that an understanding of adjustment as a long and uneven process should be built into structures aiming to support the adjustment of international students.

The present study examined inter-ethnic, rural-urban, and sex differences in self-assessed intelligence (SAI) in a Malaysian general population sample. In total, 633 individuals varying in rural or urban location, ethnicity (Malay, Kadazan, and Bajau), and sex (women versus men) provided their self-assessed overall intelligence and ten multiple intelligences. In general, results of a series of univariate analyses of variance showed that urban participants tended to have higher SAI than their rural counterparts and that men reported higher SAI than women. There was also a significant main effect of ethnicity, with Malays generally having lower estimates than Bajaus and Kadazans, respectively. There were few significant interactions between ethnicity, urban-rural location, and sex. These data present the first concurrent investigation of ethnic, rural-urban, and sex differences in SAI, and are discussed in relation to previous theoretical discussions of SAI. (Contains 2 tables.)

The Subjective Happiness Scale (SHS) has recently been developed as a more complete measure for the assessment of molar subjective happiness. In the present study, we report on the translation and validation of German and Tagalog versions of the SHS and conduct an initial cross-cultural examination of subjective happiness. In Study 1, 960 participants in Austria completed a German version of the SHS, which showed a unidimensional structure, good internal consistency, and good convergent validity with other measures of subjective well-being. In Study 2, 182 participants in the Philippines completed a Tagalog version of the scale, which likewise had a unidimensional structure, high internal consistency, and good convergent validity. Finally, the results of Study 3 indicate that there were significant cross-cultural differences in subjective happiness. Specifically, participants in individualist Austria and Britain had higher SHS scores than their counterparts in collectivist Malaysia and the Philippines. Limitations of these studies are discussed.

The Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS) is one of the most widely used scales for the measurement of subjective well-being across the globe, but no satisfactory version exists for use among Malay-speaking populations. The present study reports on the translation of a new Malay SWLS and examines its psychometric properties in a community sample of 816 Malay and 738 Chinese participants from Malaysia. Results showed that the Malay SWLS had good internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha = 0.83). Confirmatory factor analysis showed support for a unidimensional factor structure which remained invariant across sex and ethnic group. These results suggest that the Malay SWLS is a valid and reliable measure of life satisfaction for Malay-speaking samples, and extends the list of available scales for measuring subjective well-being among such groups.

The Subjective Happiness Scale (Lyubomirsky and Lepper, "Social Indicators Research," 46, 137-155, 1999) is a brief measure for assessing subjective happiness. The reliability and validity of the Malay version of the Subjective Happiness Scale was investigated in a community sample of 290 Chinese and 227 Malays in Malaysia. Results showed that the Malay Subjective Happiness Scale has excellent internal consistency, a unitary structure, and stability over a 30-day period and across ethnic groups. Moreover, the Malay version of the scale exhibited good convergent validity with single-item happiness scales. The availability of the Malay Subjective Happiness Scale is expected to facilitate the examination of happiness in Malay-speaking populations.

This study examined students' preferences for lecturers' personalities on three continents. Two-hundred and 35 university students in Malaysia, 347 university students in Britain and 139 university students in the United States provided ratings of 30 desirable and undesirable lecturer trait characteristics, which were coded into an internally reliable Big Five taxonomy. Descriptive statistics showed that, overall, students in all three settings tended to prefer Conscientious, Open, Stable and Agreeable lecturers. Further analysis showed that, overall, Malaysian students provided higher ratings for all high order traits of the Big Five than either British or American students. There were numerous gender and national differences but the latter was more a function of methodological artefacts. Educational and vocational implications are considered in conclusion.