การสื่อสารและการปรับตัวทางวัฒนธรรมของคนไทยที่เข้าร่วมโครงการเวิร์ค แอนด์ ฮอลิเดย์ วีซ่า ไทย-ออสเตรเลีย / สุรศักดิ์ บุญอาจ = Communication and cultural adaptation of Thai participants in Work and Holiday Visas Thai-Australia / Surasak Boon-arch
To study the forms and aspects of intercultural communication and adaptation, problems and obstacles in intercultural communication and the factors affecting cultural adaptation of Thai participants, in both work and everyday- life contexts. This research is conducted by both quantitative and qualitative methods, namely by survey questionnaires and in-depth interviews. The samples are totally 35 respondents: 30 Thai participants who took part or are taking part in the program for the period of six months to one year, 2 foreign supervisors and 3 foreign colleagues. The results of the research are as follow: 1. As for the forms and aspects of intercultural communication, it is found that people with whom Thai participants communicate the most are Thai colleagues and friends, Australian colleagues and supervisors, and other foreign participants respectively. The issues they communicate with their Thai friends and colleagues are both work-related and daily-life experience. The channel of intercultural communication which is used the most is “face-to-face communication”, while electronic media, especially internet, is the media they are exposed to the most. Very few Thai participants expose themselves to any governmental specific media. 2. From survey questionnaires, it is found that the average intercultural communication competence of Thai participants is at fair and good level in all three domains: cognitive, affective, and behavioral, while the result of in-depth interview show that Thai participants experience the following problems: English proficiency, different viewpoints and interpretation regarding water conservation, negative stereotype of some Australians towards Thai women, bias against Asian people of some Australians, strong group cohesiveness of Thai people, the evaluation of cultural differences in a negative way, and the avoidance of some Thai participants to learn new culture. 3. The factors affecting cultural adaptation of Thai participants are a)motivation b) English proficiency c) frequency of intercultural communication, depending on the nature of work and d) three-domain intercultural communication competence. To have Australian intimate friends tends to correlate with level of cultural adaptation competence. It is also found that the ways Thai participants use to adapt themselves are : to exhibit their positive characteristics, to rely on social network for getting information, to learn from surrounding environment, and to learn from their foreign boy or girl friends.
