Recent Grants and Research Announcements

Prepared by Bruce La Brack

The following information is a list of some of the major research projects currently underway in the field of international education. To suggest additional research projects for this list, please send an e-mail to the network manager with a few sentences explaining why this research is important to the field of international education.

University of Minnesota

The University of Minnesota was awarded a three-year Department of Education Title VI International Research and Studies (IR/S) grant in May 2006 (2006-2008). The title of the study is Beyond Immediate Impact: Study Abroad for Global Engagement (SAGE). This DOE-funded research program seeks to examine the near-term and long-term personal, professional, and social capital outcomes associated with study abroad experiences that occur during the college years. The researchers define 'social capital' as the contributions a person makes to the common good by means of civic engagement, knowledge production, social entrepreneurship, and philanthropy. With a focus on long-term impact, this study will be a retrospective tracer study using a design developed by the co-principal investigators Gerald W. Fry and R. Michael Paige. It is expected to involve some two thousand individuals from across a broad spectrum of U.S. universities.

The current SAGE research project builds on the previous three-year Title VI grant that funded the Maximizing Study Abroad (MAXSA) research program. The results of the MAXSA research are available in a four hundred page report titled Maximizing Study Abroad Through Language and Culture Strategies: Research on Students, Study Abroad Program Professionals, and Language Instructors by Andrew D. Cohen, R. Michael Paige, Rachel L. Shively, Holly A. Emert, & Joseph G. Hoff, available through the Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition (CARLA) of the University of Minnesota.

Further details on the current SAGE project are available by mail or e-mail from R. Michael Paige, University of Minnesota, 330 Wulling Hall, 86 Pleasant Ave. SE, Minneapolis MN 55455.

AFS Intercultural Programs, Inc.

AFS (formerly American Field Service) is currently sponsoring a self-financed companion study on the long-term impact of the AFS program. The working title is "Long-term Impact of AFS: A Study of 40-year-olds" and the research will span 2006-2008 and potentially involve some 10,000 participants from across the globe including the United States. Preliminary focus groups are now underway as the first part of the survey development process, with the main web-based survey scheduled to take place in early 2007.

The initial plan is to survey the AFS program participants from 12-14 countries who participated in the program between 1980 and 1986 and a similar group with the same age and social profiles who did not have the AFS experience in order to find out if the exchange experience that the AFS students had in high school may influence the attitudes they now have about other cultures as well as their current activities relating to international awareness and civic participation. The research will be coordinated by Bettina (Betsy) Hansel.

The sample is projected to be around 10,000 individuals (50% will be former AFS participants and 50% non-AFS participants of similar background which will represent both a matched sample and a control group). Both AFS and control groups will complete the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) as well as other questions related to their intercultural networks, experiences with different cultures, and other measures related to their knowledge, experience, attitudes and activities with other cultures.

Background on AFS Study

In 1981-82, AFS conducted a major study of the impact of the AFS program with a group of U.S. students who went abroad on both year-long and summer-long programs to any of 50 countries in the world. These former participants are now about 40 years old. This age group currently comprises a good portion of AFS host families and parents of the next generation of exchange students. It is also the age group that is typically at mid-career, and that includes well-established community leaders. Forty is the age where researchers should expect to see the real results of the individual's intercultural development and their own impact on the community.

This new study is considered a follow-up study to the recently concluded AFS study titled "Assessment of the Impact of the AFS Study Abroad Experience" (380kb ) designed and conducted by Mitchell R. Hammer, and the results of the two studies will be compared. The total sample of the Hammer study comprised 2,100 students, of which 1,500 were AFS exchange students in 2002-03 who had lived with a host family and studied in another country for ten months. Six hundred of the total sample were "student friends" of participants and comprised a control group. AFS offices in Austria, Brazil, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, and the United States collaborated in the data gathering. AFS is also planning a more direct follow up using in-depth interviews with a portion of this student group from 2002-03, which they hope to begin later in 2007.

For further information on this study and similar research contact the AFS Center for the Study of Intercultural Learning. A downloadable PDF file summary of the Assessment study is available on this page as well as additional information on past AFS research and program history. For further information please contact: Bettina Hansel, Head of Research & Evaluation, AFS International, 71 West 23rd Street, 17th Floor New York, NY 10010.

June 2006