A CAUSAL MODEL OF FACTORS INFLUENCING THE UNIVERSITY CHOICE OF INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS IN THAILAND

Abstract

ABSTRACT

The purposes of this research were 1) to explore the relationships between factorsinfluencing the university choice of international students in Thailand and 2) to proposeand test a causal model of factors influencing the university choice. Six latent variableswhich were university characteristics, socioeconomic status, country characteristics, significantpersons, students’ aspiration, and students’ university choice were used in thisresearch. A simple random sampling technique was employed to obtain a sample of 255undergraduate international students in 18 universities. The University Choice Questionnairewas employed to collect the data. The SPSS and LISREL programs were used for dataanalysis. The causal model of this research was tested using structural equation modeling.The research results explore that there are relationships between university characteristics,significant persons, students’ aspiration, and students’ university choice in Thailand.The university characteristics and significant persons are considered as moderatelyinfluential factors for international university choice, while students’ aspiration is highlyinfluential factor. The research findings also show the overall parsimonious goodness offit model fitted to the empirical data. The model indicates that the Chi-square goodnessof fit test is 70.94, df = 33, RMSEA = 0.067, GFI = 0.95, AGFI = 0.90, CFI = 0.98. Themajor research finding is students’ aspiration has a significant direct effect on students’university choice, whereas university characteristics and significant persons have indirecteffects. It is concluded that an international student’s university choice derives from her orhis aspiration, which is influenced by the university characteristics and significant persons.

KEYWORDS : Causal model of factors, University choice of international students