Interacting sojourners: A study of students studying abroad

This research note describes the out-of-class experiences of students who took part in a yearlong study-abroad program in Maynooth, Ireland. The study examines how the program influenced students' desire to become involved in out-of-class activities, how out-of-class experiences fostered students' learning of the Irish culture, and how the experiences influenced students' attitudes toward cultures other than their own. The study employed a descriptive qualitative approach using both long interviews and focus groups for gathering data. Results of the study suggest that the students used ethnographic discovery methods, as demonstrated through Spradley's [Spradley, J. P. (1980). Participant observation. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston] means-end domain of semantic relationships.