Annotation Number 1

Niehoff, Esther, et al. “International Sojourn Experience and Personality Development: Selection and Socialization Effects of Studying Abroad and the Big Five.” Personality and Individual Differences, vol. 112, 01 July 2017, pp. 55-61. EBSCOhost, dol: 10.1016/j.paid.2017.02.043.

In the article, “International sojourn experience and personality development: Selection and Socialization effects of studying abroad and the Big Five”, the researchers look at how studying abroad changes a person. Ester, Linn, and Philipp are affiliated with Leuphana University of Lüneburg. In addition, the authors have submitted an abstract and have cited other sources, which shows that they are a credible source. In order to compare these results with what they can measure, they use the concept of the Big Five Personality traits. As stated by McCrae and “the well-established model Five Factor model (extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism and openness) is widely accepted for its high reliability and temporal stability.” The researchers predicted that people who went to study in a foreign country, in this case Germany, would come back with higher amount of agreeableness, extraversion, openness, and conscientiousness and a decrease in neuroticism.

In order to test this prediction, they broke up people into groups of people who were going abroad and those who weren’t. The sample size was 221 with 93 being people who went abroad and 128 for those who weren’t. In order to test this, they sent out a questionnaire to both the people who were going abroad and those who were not twice. In conclusion, their hypothesis was correct; however, they did find interesting new information. One was the idea of openness and how it was limited affected by going abroad. Secondly neuroticism was positively correlated to ages. In Statistics, positive correlation means that the data either both increase or decreases. The researchers found that as the age increased so did the neuroticism, which is reasonable. They explained this phenomena by the common understanding that as you get closer to graduation you need to focus on what your career is and what you need to do. It is a lot easier to be not looking out for yourself when you aren’t worried about your next meal. At the end of the study, they discuss the limitation the study had. For example, the research was gathered from a survey instead of observing the student’s behavior, which means that some other variable could affect the data.

Even though this source had limitations, the source allowed me to prove that a study have been done to show that going abroad can positively impact students as a whole. I may further research into the Big Five Personality and see what characteristics line up most with being successful as both a student and employees. While this article focusses on the attributes developed when studying abroad, “Student’s Stories of Studying Abroad: Reflections Upon Return” focuses on why so many students go abroad.