An exploration into the motivational factors behind international students’ decisions to study at the University of Bristol: Individual Reflective Report

Research Summary

The international student mobility is a field that has attracted much interest in recent decades, especially in the past fourteen years. As such, universities in the UK, among them the University of Bristol, have developed programs and resources to facilitate an easy transition for international students. The University of Bristol has approximately 30,000 international undergraduate and postgraduate students, which makes it about 28% of the school’s population (University of Bristol, 2023). The number of post-graduate students has increased significantly since 2016. However, not much is known about what motivates international students to stud at the University of Bristol and what contributes to the higher rate of mobility, a gap that this research aimed to fill.

This research was shaped by earlier work in the field that has shown that there are several theoretical models that could explain what motivated foreign students to enroll for studies at the University of Bristol. These include the push and pull factors, whereas pull factors could include the attractiveness of foreign culture, opportunities, and the perception of the degree value. Some push factors are reasons at home country forcing the students to pursue education abroad. Self-determination theory could explain the intrinsic motivation of some students. Further social networks theory explains some extrinsic motivations.

To fill this gap in research, we opted for a mixed-methods survey where questionnaires were administered through social media to collect qualitative and quantitative data that informs the study. The mixed methods were selected because the research question could not be answered by either qualitative or quantitative data alone. Open-ended questions were critical in understanding the motivations, while the frequency of a particular motivation or its magnitude could only be explained through quantitative data. Qualitative data analysis involved data cleaning, transcribing, coding, identification of themes, review, definition, and then write-up. On the other hand, quantitative data analysis included the use of descriptive analysis, where nine themes at three levels of research, i.e., UK, Bristol City, and the University of Bristol, were tabulated.

This was the most challenging part of the research for me. In the research, we utilized a combination of critical realist and pragmatic positions as the philosophical stance. However, as shown in the instructor’s comments, we may not have fully grasped the coherence between these perspectives, pointing out the lack of understanding of the concepts in depth. Since then, I have done more research on the concepts, and I am aware of how we could have approached this section better.

I now understand that critical realism envisions three layers of social reality, including reality, actual and empirical domains (Anderson, 2020). The empirical involves observable events and experiences; the actual includes events and experiences as they occur, while the real includes the underlying structures and mechanisms influencing observable phenomena. On the other hand, pragmatism focuses on the practical consequences of ideas and actions and encourages a flexible and adaptive approach to research methods (Kaushik & Walsh, 2019).

I now understand that we focused more on pragmatic justification rather than exploring how the positions complement one another in this research design, results, discussion, and conclusion. To show that both perspectives were critical for research and to achieve coherence, I should have incorporated the participants' perspectives (subjective experiences) along with the impact or identifying significant patterns and generalizable insights. This approach would have shown how both perspectives were relevant in addressing different aspects of the research questions, ultimately leading to a more cohesive and comprehensive study.

Lessons from Research Methods

Finally, the research failed to include a demographic data collection tool, as pointed out by the instructor. This was a major flaw in the methodology used because the demographic data could have been critical in this research for two reasons. First, it would have helped determine whether the sample used represents the international students’ profile based on their collected data (Question Pro, 2023). This establishes whether the results we obtain can be generalized to all international students based in the UK. Second, it could have been vital in finding other patterns with different demographic groups. For example, age might influence the motivation of an international student to study abroad.

Identifying and Mitigating Ethical Issues

Lessons from reading research had the most significant impact on enhancing my ability to identify and mitigate ethical issues. From these readings, the first principle is minimizing the risk of harm (Bos, 2020). The research inherently has no risk of harm to the participants. The only risk of harm could have been the leaking of sensitive data, which was mitigated by ensuring that the data collected did not have identifying information. This ensured that the principle of anonymity and confidentiality was met. To comply with the GDPR rules and regulations, the participants were advised on why the data was collected and how it would be used. They were also advised that the data would be available to them on request. Further, the data was stored in encrypted folders, and access was limited to the research team only.

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