1

論文
Impact of Short-Term Study Abroad on Trust and Civic Norms
Mari Katori(Aomori Public University)

１．Introduction
In recent years, short-term study abroad for higher education with diverse goals isincreasingly popular, especially in developed countries. For example, the EU has the ERASMUS
Programme (European Region Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students) andAustraria has the “New Colombo Plan ” Programme to boost the mobility of young people.

Likewise, now Japan is actively promoting “Tobitate Ryugaku Japan ” (“TOBITATE! YoungAmbassador Program”), a study abroad campaign introduced in 2013, intended to double the 2013

number of Japanese “mobile students” (those going overseas) by 2020. Figure 1 shows the recent
numbers of Japanese mobile students and trip durations by year. The number more than doubled

from 2009 to 2015, with the Tobitate Programme implemented in 2013 in response to a slowingof the growth of mobile students the previous year. Note also that 97% of the 84,456 Japanesestudying abroad in 2015 were on courses of less than one year (in this article, I call study abroad
programmes of less than one year “short-term” and one year or more programmes “long-term”).

Fig.1 The number and duration of study abroad trips by Japanese students(from MEXT 2016)
In response to this recent increasing popularity of short-term study abroad, a number ofstudies looking at the impact of short-term study abroad have been carried out. Most have

2Mari Katori

focused on changes in sojourners’ soft-skills rather than hard-skills, presumably because
statistically significant improvements in hard skills, especially as measured by large
standardized tests such as TOEIC, TOEFL and G-TELP. Chieffo & Griffiths (2004) found a
statistically significant difference between mobile and non-mobile students in terms of “globalawareness”, a composite they defined as including intercultural awareness, personal growthand development, awareness of global interdependence, and functional knowledge of worldgeography and language. They concluded that even programmes as short as one month wereeducationally worthwhile endeavors that had significant self-perceived impacts on students’intellectual and personal lives. Likewise, Rexeisen & Al-Khatib (2009) concluded that study
abroad has a positive impact on both intercultural development and on attitudes toward the“physical environment”. Scharoun (2016, p.85) found three key benefits of short-term study
abroad: they are a way to connect students that might not otherwise travel abroad; they
can increase cross-cultural awareness and intelligence; and thirdly, they support learning
outcomes and experiences in a global context. Murphy, Sahakyan, Yong-Yi, & Magnan (2014)
compared groups of alumni with and without undergraduate study abroad experience,and concluded that alumni with experience of study abroad showed higher levels of civicengagement; higher levels of “voluntary simplicity” (opting to live simply); and higher levelsof philanthropic activity for organizations devoted to the arts, education, environmental
issues, human rights, international development, and social justice. An earlier study by theauthor (Katori 2016) supported the general theme of these studies, finding no statisticallysignificant effect on English proficiency from short-term study abroad episodes, but thatparticipants report positive changes and improvements in a range of soft skills, including
global and cultural awareness, greater confidence, interpersonal and interculturalcommunication skills, and some kind of paradigm shift in their way of thinking.
２．Background of the study
The author has been involved with the study abroad programme at a university innorthern Japan (Tohoku district) for several years. At present, the university offers students
three short-term study abroad options (table 1).
Table 1

Details of the three study abroad programmes.
Destination

Duration

Study hours(per week)

Accommodation

Boston (USA)

3 months

25

dormitory

Waikato (NZ)

3 weeks

23

homestayStirling (UK)

4 weeks

20

dormitory(single)

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Impact of Short-Term Study Abroad on Trust and Civic Norms

To make these programmes as effective and fruitful as possible, the author has studied
the impact of the short-term study abroad programme since 2015. Results from a small initialgroup found no statistically significant effect on English proficiency (Katori 2016), but werefrom a small sample of only 15 mobile students. A repeat study in autumn 2016 gathered datafrom 27 mobile students and used t -tests to analyse the pre- and post-test results. These tests
were the level 3 G-TELP (General Test of English Proficiency), administered before and after
the abroad study period. Changes in test scores were not significant at p ≦0.05 under a two-tailed t -test (t (25)=1.19, p =.24). Table 2 shows the G-TELP results for the 27 mobile students.
These 27 students studied abroad for a mean period of 4.3 weeks.
Table 2G-TELP results (Pre- and Post-test scores)
Subject
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
AveragePre

135
196
124
219
206198207
128
180
190
124
211
215
163
179
186
211
188
185
211
189
227
167
190
135
184
207
183.52

Post

210
184
130
240
151
207
173
138
140
129
172
211
219
190
210
187
229
181
204
187
204
228
236
176
191
217
219
191.22

In both studies, mobile students were given a semi-structured interview, to check theirsubjective response to their study abroad experience, and to check for changes in softskills and attitudes. Eight students were added to Katori (2016); therefore, the number of
total interviewee was 30. Figures 2 and 3 shows the interview results. The questions weredeveloped with reference to Edwards (2009), and emailed to interviewees a few days inadvance, so they could prepare rough answers in advance. Each interview was conductedindividually and took about 45 to 60 minutes. Although students answered about 20
questions in their interviews, only the two relevant to this topic are shown below.

4Mari Katori
Would like to havefun, 6%

Would like to go
abroad, 13%
Improvement ofEnglish ability,
25%

Inter-culturalexperiences, 37%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

Try to test thelimit, 19%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

Fig. 2 What is your main purpose in studying abroad?

Identity as a Japanese,
10%
Self-discovery,
64%

0%

20%

40%

Approach toEnglish, 26%

60%

80%

100%

Fig. 3 How did you change?
As we can see in fig. 2, though the students’ main purpose in participating in thestudy abroad programme is “inter-cultural experiences”, a full quarter of the students aim
primarily to improve their English ability.
As for fig. 3, most students struggled to give a concrete explanation regarding how they
had changed or developed, while nonetheless being sure that they had changed in someway. Some students remarked that they became “rougher” (more easy-going, less worried
about small details), while others mentioned that they came to ignore some less-important(Japanese) societal norms and morals after their stay overseas, but at the level at which aclear theme was apparent in answers, students were clear only that they had discovered
something about themselves, which is a rather vague result.
Thinking, then, of how the nature or content of this self-discovery could be made clearer,
I have taken a start from a recurring comment made not by students themselves, but by theuniversity faculty members: that mobile students are more active with regard to voluntary
activities, and more active interpersonally in and out of class.
Knack & Keefer (1997) suggest that willingness to participate in group activities (forexample as volunteers, in youth clubs, and so on) is correlated with levels of trust in thesociety: specifically, in high trust societies, people tend to be more willing and active intheir participation in group activities. Fig. 4 shows Knack & Keefer’s results, ranking 29countries including Japan with regard to “norms of civic cooperation” and “general trust”.
Japan was ranked highly (third out of the 29 countries) for obedience to norms of civic
cooperation, but in the middle of the 29 countries for “general trust” (see also the discussionin Brinton 2008).

Impact of Short-Term Study Abroad on Trust and Civic Norms

5Indeed, American students, coming from a society with a higher trust rating thanJapan -- a difference Yamagishi & Komiyama (1995) show to be significant -- do often seemto be more proactive in joining in a range of social activities than Japanese students. So,
thinking about ways to better characterise and even quantify some of what changed formobile students, general trust and norms of civic cooperation are candidates which areboth interesting (since they affect behaviour, and participation is presumably a social good,allowing people to cultivate both social skills and social contacts) and credible (since theydiffer significantly between countries, spending time in a different country exposes study
abroad students to a novel environment with regard to general trust and norms of civiccooperation).

Norms of Civic cooperation

Fig.4 Norms of civic cooperation and Trust

From Knack & Keefer (1997)

３．The purpose of this study
In recent years, study abroad is increasingly popular for Japanese students in higher
education. The popularity of studying abroad is expected to continue to increase forseveral years. However, even after their study-abroad experience, students often do not
clearly identify or quantify the changes and growth they gained through their programme.
Therefore, the focus in this article is to examine whether study abroad has an impact
on general trust and norms of civic cooperation. For mobile students or expected mobilestudents, to understand the meaning or value of their experiences and identify their changes
would be helpful for them to achieve it or use it more effectively to make the long-term
impact of study abroad.

6Mari Katori

４．Method
4.1 Participants
46 Japanese subjects took part in this research. 44 are university students and 2 arealumni at the same university located the northern part of Japan (Tohoku district). 21(including 2 alumni) out of 46 have participated in a university-provided short-term study
abroad programme between 2013 and 2016: 6 students went to the United States (Boston) for
one or three months, 13 went to New Zealand (Waikato) for three weeks, and 2 went to the UK(Stirling) for one month. 25 non-mobile students took part in this research as the control group.
4.2 Norms of civic cooperation
As a way of measuring obedience to social norms, I adapted a brief questionnaire froman article by Knack & Keefer (1997). Five items were used to measure subject’ norms of civiccooperation. Respondents are asked whether each of the mentioned behaviors “can always bejustified; can never be justified; or something in between”. The five behaviors are as follows.
a) “claiming government benefits which you are not entitled to”b) “avoiding a fare on public transport”c) “cheating on taxes if you have the chance”d) “keeping money that you have found”e) “failing to report damage you’ve done accidentally to a parked vehicle”
In this research, I used a version modified into Japanese for both mobile and non-mobile
students, and counted the answer “can always be justified” as worth 1 point, “something inbetween” worth 2 points, and “never be justified” as worth 3 points.
4.3 General trust
Then, to measure subjects’ general trust, 5 items from Yamagishi & Komiyama (1995)
were adapted because they fit the current context. Yamagishi & Komiyama modified Julian
Rotter’s scale for the Japanese context. The 5 items are:1. “originally, most people are honest”
2. “most people are reliable”
3. “originally, most people are kind and good”
4. “most people trust others”
5. “I am rather trustful”
Subjects answer with a number from 1 to 7, where 1 means “strongly disagree” and 7means “strongly agree”. Finally, scores for the five questions are averaged and analyzed.
５．Findings
5.1 Norms of civic cooperation
Figure 5 shows the results of the questionnaire regarding norms of civic cooperation. 25

Impact of Short-Term Study Abroad on Trust and Civic Norms

7

students were in the control non-mobile group and 21 subjects were in the mobile group. As
you can see, the average results are very close (2.75 and 2.74) and there was no significant

differences by two-tailed t -test (t (44)=-0.14, p =.89). The result is not significant at p <.05.
Therefore, within the limits of this study and its operational definition of norms of civiccooperation, we can conclude that short-term study abroad experience do not have a direct
impact on norms of civic cooperation.
32.8

2.75

2.74

non-mobile groupmobile group

2.6
2.4
2.2
2
1.8
1.6
1.4
1.2
1Fig. 5 Results: norms of civic cooperation
5.2 General trust
Figure 6 illustrates the results of the questionnaire concerning general trust. Again, 25students were in the control non-mobile group and 21 subjects were in the mobile group.
The average results are 3.75 and 4.73 respectively, which a two-tailed t -test shows to besignificant at p <.05 (t (44)=2.88, p =.006.) Therefore, within the limits of this study andits operational definition of general trust, we can conclude that short-term study abroad
experiences have some impact on general trust.
4.73

5
4.5
4

3.75

3.5
32.5
2
1.5
1
0.5
0

non-mobile group

Fig. 6 Results: general trust

mobile group

8Mari Katori

６．Discussion
As table 2 shows, short-term study abroad episodes themselves have no statisticallysignificant effect on English proficiency. However, participants report positive changes andimprovements during the semi-structural interview after their study abroad. The majorityof students answered that “something has changed”. Though students struggled to explain
what had changed clearly, they were all positive and related to “self-discovery” (see figure3). This study aimed to examine whether study abroad has an impact on general trust andnorms of civic cooperation.
The results show that there was no significant difference between mobile and nonmobile students with regards to “norms of civic cooperation”. This seems to fit well withthe findings of Rexeisen & Al-Khatib (2009), namely that study abroad experiences have nodirect positive impact on moral reasoning or change in ethical reasoning. Their argumentthat morals and civic norms are usually cultivated and built up through the entirety of one’sexperiences, so a mere month of new experiences cannot be expected to produce a quick andmeasurable change, seems credible.
The results show, however, that there was a significant change in “general trust”
between the mobile and non-mobile groups. In terms of what this means, following
Yamagishi (2005), a high tendency of “general trust” does not mean being easily fooled byothers. Rather, general trust is identified with high “social intelligence”. In his words, people
who have high social intelligence are able to accept proper information in interpersonal
relations sensitively and behave appropriately based on that information. Additionally, as
Knack and Keefer (1997) suggest, in high trust societies, people tend to be more willing andactive in their participation in group activities such as volunteering. Accordingly, short-term
study abroad seems to be a social good, helping participants develop “social intelligence” andgiving them the willingness or ability to be more socially active and thereby cultivate bothsocial skills and social contacts.
７．Conclusion
In Japan, short-term study abroad programmes will continue to grow at least until
2020. In recent years, many studies have tried to find or quantify the positive impact ofstudy abroad experiences. This study found a significant impact on “general trust” at theconclusion of short-term study abroad trips. Increasing general trust sounds like both anindividual good (involving gains in social intelligence and social activity) and a societal
good. If the experience of studying abroad can improve general trust, private and public
investment in studying abroad may be seen as worthwhile.
Acknowledgments
Parts of this manuscript were verbally presented at the May 2017 JASEC Research Forumand have been revised and expanded in response to questious and comments received there.

Impact of Short-Term Study Abroad on Trust and Civic Norms

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