Introduction: With the increasing number of international students joining various universities worldwide, including Malaysia, acculturative stress resulting from their attempts to adjust to the cultures of host countries is one of the most challenging issues affecting their life in general and academic life in particular. The purpose of this study is to determine the level of acculturative stress and intention to dropout among new postgraduate international students in public universities, Malaysia. Methods: a cross-sectional study was conducted among 522 new international post-graduate students joining Malaysian public universities on their first semester. A multistage sampling method was adapted, and data were collected via self-administered questionnaire by using a validated questionnaire. Results: Out of the overall number of 522 respondents, (68.60%) of them were males while (31.40%) were females, the mean age of respondents was 28.95 ±5.91 years. The majority of the participants 60.54% (326) were single, whereas those who are married students represented 205 (39.3%). This study showed that 410 (78.5%) of the new postgraduate international students experienced a moderate level of acculturative stress with a median value of 107.00, while 63 (12.1 %) high level of stress and 49 (4.9 %) experience low level of acculturative stress .Consequently224 ,42.1 % of the participants students they have intention to dropout from the university for any reason , while 298 (57.1 % ) they don’t have any intention to dropout from the university Conclusions: This study showed the importance of educational intervention program among new international postgraduate students towards adapting to the Malaysian culture, in relation with increasing their cultural knowledge and interaction with host nationals and to reduce their acculturative stress and their intention to dropout from the university.
Students-t test is the most popular statistical test. The test compares two mean values to judge if they are different or not. For small data it is possible to conduct it using manual calculation – however that is not the case. Researchers would need to use statistical software and packages to conduct their analysis. This guide will help the junior researchers to conduct independent- and paired-t test using STATA software.