Culture, Gender, Self-Efficacy, and Life Satisfaction: A Comparison Between Americans and Chinese People with Spinal Cord Injuries

Journal of Rehabilitation,  July-Sept, 2000  by Nan Zhang Hampton,  Amy Marshall

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Table 4

Summary of Stepwise Regression Analysis for Gender, Values, Self-Efficacy, and Demographic Variables Predicting Life Satisfaction in Chinese with SCI

Variable     B     SE B    [Beta]

Step 1
 Efficacy    .35   .06    .49(***)

Step 2
 Efficacy    .28   .05    .40(***)
 Health     4.69   .93    .39(***)

Note. [R.sup.2] = .24 for Step 1 (p<.001); [Delta] [R.sup.2] = .39 for Step 2 (p<.001);

(***) p<.001.

A one way analysis of the variance was conducted to examine the influence of employment status on life satisfaction. For the American group, the means of the LSS of individuals who were unemployed, employed part-time, or employed full-time were 95.94, 96.83 and 99.30, respectively. For the Chinese group, the means of the LSS were: 70.86 (unemployed), 73.05 (part-time), and 74.50 (full-time), respectively. Although participants who were employed were more satisfied with their lives than those who were unemployed, the differences were not significant at the .05 level. In addition, a one way analysis of the variance was conducted to examine differences in life satisfaction between participants with different levels of injuries. No significant difference was found for either Americans or Chinese.

Discussions

This study focused on value differences between Americans and Chinese people with SCI. the influences of culture and gender on life satisfaction, and the correlates of life satisfaction. It should be noted that all instruments used in this study were developed in the U.S. Although these instruments had been pretested with the Chinese people who had SCI, the constructs measured may have different meanings in the two cultures. Hence, the results of this study must be interpreted with caution.

Nevertheless, the results of the study indicated that the values of Americans and Chinese with SCI differed significantly and reflected the differences between individualistic cultures and collectivistic cultures. Americans tended to value keeping distance from their ingroups. On the other hand, the Chinese valued a close family relationship.

It is worthwhile to note that Americans scored much lower than Chinese on self-reliance. This finding was consistent with previous studies on individualism-collectivism with college students in the U.S., Hong Kong, and China (Triandis, McCusker, Hui, 1990). Triandis et al. suggested that the higher scores of Chinese students on self-reliance might reflect the pressures of modernization in both China and Hong Kong. Additionally, Triandis et al. (1990) pointed out that self-reliance might have different meanings for individualists and collectivists. For Americans, self-reliance may be linked to individual competition; for Chinese, it may be linked to avoidance of being a burden on the ingroup. Thus, self-reliance may not be a good measure of individualism.

Further, Americans with SCI were more satisfied with their lives than their Chinese counterparts. This finding was consistent with previous research in social psychology that also found a discrepancy in the life satisfaction experienced by American and Chinese college students (Diener & Diener, 1995). However, two culture-related values (separation from ingroups and family integrity) did not appear to have an influence on life satisfaction when other influential variables were controlled. Perhaps these two values were too narrow. They focus on living arrangement within a family (e.g., Aging parents should live at home with their children) and distance from one's ingroups (e.g., Children should not feel honored even if the father were highly praised and given an award by a government official for his contributions and services to the community). They might not represent values that influence people's perceptions of life satisfaction in the two cultures.