Application of the scenario questionnaire of horizontal and vertical individualism and collectivism to the assessment of cultural distance and cultural fit

The article reports the results of the development and application of a scenario questionnaire for the assessment of four cultural orientations: horizontal individualism (HI) and collectivism (HC) and vertical individualism (VI) and collectivism (VC). The 12-item questionnaire which is designed for application in the academic domain among university students has acceptable internal reliability and construct validity. This questionnaire was used to create the indices of cultural distance and cultural fit, and the hypotheses about their relations with cultural adaptation and the psychological well-being of international, Canadian-born and US-born students were supported. International students, who arrived mostly from China, Japan and South Korea see their home academic settings as more collectivistic (HC and VC) and less HI in comparison to Canada. A discrepancy between these students' home country and Canada regarding the VC orientation was associated with higher depression. International as well as North American students had various degrees of fit to the culture of their university. The most predictive orientations with regard to the indicators of well-being and social adaptation were vertical orientations (VC and VI). Results are discussed in terms of the applicability of the developed questionnaire to study acculturation and in terms of the different role of horizontal versus vertical dimensions in cultural adaptation.