An initial exploration of the cross-cultural validity of the global citizenship scale in the Hong Kong setting

Abstract

International service-learning programmes have been increasingly explored and integrated into the curriculum of tertiary education (Smith et al., 2013). Studies support the benefits to students from these projects, including gains in critical thinking skills, integration of theory and practices and global citizenship (Hartman, 2009). However, existing research has largely ignored the development of a systematic metric to measure the impact of international service projects on university students. In this study, we conducted an initial exploration of the Global Citizenship Scale (GCS) (Morais & Ogden, 2010). Eighty-six students from a university in Hong Kong who participated in four international service-learning subjects and one project were surveyed and their responses were analyzed. Results show that the subscales of GCS have good internal consistency and the factor analysis provides partial support for the proposed seven-factor model. These findings support further explorations of the cross-cultural validity of GCS for Hong Kong students.