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Most of the studies in the field of homesickness are confined to students; this study aims to explore the feeling of homesickness among working professionals. Also, it tends to examine individual differences in the experience of homesickness across employees of different gender, ages, experience, family type, etc. The study also aspires to compare homesickness among military and civil employees.

The study explores five dimensions of homesickness, namely, missing family, missing friend, rumination about home, feeling lonely and adjustment problems. The collected data is subjected to reliability, validity and confirmatory factor analysis. Further, t-test and analysis of variance are used to explore homesickness differences across soldiers and corporate employees.

The study reveals that homesickness is significantly higher for employees in the male, unmarried, nuclear family, above the age of 45 years, and below the graduation category. Also, defense people experience more homesickness than civilian employees.

This study is one of the pioneer studies that compare homesickness among defense and civilian employees. Also, variables such as type of family, the experience of employees and marital status have hardly been explored in the literature of homesickness.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the moderating role of the demographic variables in emotional intelligence, homesickness and the development of mood swings in university students. Additionally, the paper investigates the relationship among emotional intelligence, homesickness and mood swings in university students.

Purposive sampling technique was employed based on a cross-sectional design. The sample comprised 304 university students (male students, n=210, female students, n=94). Three scales were used to measure the homesickness, emotional intelligence and positive and negative mood swings in university students.

The results revealed that homesickness was positively and significantly correlated with mood swings (r=0.34, p<0.001) and negative mood swings (r=0.49, p<0.001). The result also displayed that emotional intelligence was correlated with homesickness (r=−0.15, p<0.05), positive mood swings (r=0.33, p<0.05) and negative mood swings (r=−0.24, p<0.05). The results of the analysis revealed that demographic variables such as age and gender were the moderator between homesickness and development of mood swings. The results also revealed that demographic variable such as gender was the moderator between emotional intelligence and mood swings. This study recommended that those younger students who had experienced homesickness were more likely to develop negative mood swings as compared to older students.

The study also recommended that those young students who had emotional intelligence were less likely to develop negative mood swings as compared to older students.

The study further recommended that those female students who had experienced homesickness were more likely to develop positive mood swings as compared to male students. Recommendations of the currents study are that university students can benefit equally but female students can benefit more from an intervention addressing homesickness. This study would be helpful in pedagogical and clinical settings to raise the awareness to effectively deal with their children.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

Homesickness is significantly higher in employees who are male, married, members of a nuclear family, above the age of 45 and below graduation level. Defense personnel experience significantly higher levels of homesickness than civilian personnel.

The briefing saves busy executives, strategists and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

The anxiety, fear and uncertainty of a global pandemic can also entail a great deal of boredom. Such an experience arises not only from the lack of activity that comes with staying at home for hours on end but also from an overabundance of stimulation with the use of technology that is also found at home. Through the lens of Henri Lefebvre's metaphilosophy, this chapter explores the experience of boredom during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. In particular, the focus here is on the elevated use of screen technology in everyday life and the blurring of the line between work life and home life for white-collar workers and the boredom that results. Ultimately, it is argued that the experience of boredom is not simply a psychological curiosity but is a type of homesickness with the potential to change everyday life after the pandemic.

This paper aims to examine country-of-origin (COO) effects from the theoretical angle of extended self and “otherness”. Traditional COO perspectives view COO as an important quality-related, informational cue used to form product evaluations, develop preferences and make purchase decisions.

An experiment was conducted with the COO of a fresh milk product manipulated to examine these predictions. Data were collected from four samples, Americans living in the USA, Americans living in China, Chinese living in China and Chinese living in the USA.

Results found that COO effects were stronger when consumers felt greater animosity toward the foreign country, were more ethnocentric and were less acculturated (i.e. conceptualized as a less expanded self). Additionally, negative product events were interpreted in light of self, in that reactions to an adverse act were stronger when “others” committed the act. American consumers living abroad were more heavily influenced by COO effects, and evidence suggests that this effect occurred because these Americans had a less expanded self than their Chinese counterparts.

This study provides a unique angle which leads to a deeper understanding of COO effects which augments the traditional match hypothesis. Specifically, COO effects are stronger, the smaller one’s extended self (greater animosity and ethnocentrism, less acculturation), and that wrongdoings are interpreted in light of self (i.e. reaction to an adverse act is stronger when “others” commit the act). Few studies to date have focused on these factors as layers of armor that consumers use to protect their self and extended self-image in a cross-cultural context.

There is little understanding of the pressure, loneliness and homesickness, the workers from Mainland China faced when working overseas in a foreign land like Singapore. The families which the workers left behind in Mainland China when they work in Singapore were also neglected. The purpose of this paper is to examine the wider social aspects relating to Chinese foreign workers in the Singapore construction industry.

The research process was based on a questionnaire survey of Chinese construction workers in Singapore. A questionnaire with 45 questions was designed in which the information solicited included the socio‐demographic characteristics of the respondents, the reasons behind their trans‐national migration behaviour, the impact of this migratory behaviour on the workers and their families in Mainland China, and the workers' perceptions of and feelings towards working overseas. In total, 65 fully completed questionnaires were analyzed and reported in the study.

Supporting the family was the overarching reason for Chinese construction workers to work in Singapore. However, they were unhappy in Singapore owing to: feeling of homesickness, loneliness, long working hours, overtime work and a lack of understanding, empathy and appreciation from the locals.

This paper has taken the first step in exploring the neglected aspects of Chinese construction workers in Singapore. It provides a set of recommendations on how the relevant government authorities, employers and non‐governmental organizations can pay more attention to the emotional and psychological needs of these foreign workers. It also provides a better understanding of these workers to help raise public acceptance of them in society.

This paper outlines a variety of the research on student attrition and recognises some of the sensitivities that may be involved for some students in dealing with dropping out of university. This paper claims that because of these sensibilities, some student’s responses to direct questions about the reasons for attrition may be biased by social desirability. The purpose of this paper is to get beyond social desirability bias to examine a fuller range of reasons for student retention and attrition.

In an exploratory investigation, this research study uses a projective technique which helps to circumvent the conscious defences of respondents. The projective technique is based on the “thematic apperception test” and uses a “bubble drawing” to elicit emotional and more socially undesirable responses.

All first-year students appear to consider leaving university, and emotional considerations involving loneliness and homesickness are much more prominent than most quantitative studies acknowledge. For example, in this research, social concerns are twice as prominent as financial concerns, whereas in past survey research, financial concerns have been identified as most prominent.

To retain students, universities need to provide new students with real care and support, especially in their first few weeks at university. To study retention comprehensively, researchers need to go beyond the confines of positivist research.

This is the first study that uses a projective technique to investigate student retention and attrition. By going beyond a merely positivist approach to research, a fuller, deeper and more complete understanding of the wide extent and profound nature of the emotional issues involved in student attrition and retention is gained.

The purpose of this article is to analyze the links between nostalgia and food consumption.

Based on an exploratory qualitative analysis of 104 descriptions of nostalgic food consumptions, the use of NVivo helps to substantiate and interpret the textual interview data.

The research suggests six themes of food nostalgia (childhood, yearning, substitute, homesickness, special occasions and rediscovery). Prior research suggests that nostalgia is rather a negative or ambivalent emotion; however, the findings of this study suggest that nostalgic food consumption is rather related to positive emotions.

Perspectives are given for the use of nostalgia in an advertising context and as a reinsurance factor.

This research integrates marketing and sociological perspectives to better understand links between food consumption and nostalgia.

This paper reports on findings from an ethnographic study of international student adjustment. The paper recommends the use of ethnography as a way to research the experiences of tourists and migrants to build up a body of knowledge on the outcome of cross-cultural contact for these two groups. The aim of my ethnographic study was to capture the adjustment journey of a group of international postgraduate students at a university in the South of England. The ethnographic approach involved regular in-depth individual interviews with 13 students of different nationalities and overt participant observation of the entire postgraduate cohort of 150 students. Research began on the first day of induction in September 2003 and ended upon completion and submission of the Masters dissertation in October 2004. Students' experience of adjustment to academic and socio-cultural life was therefore captured from arrival in the new country to the return home one full year later. This study finds that stress was at its height in the initial stage of the academic sojourn; the struggle to cope with the challenges of foreign language use and an unfamiliar academic and the socio-cultural environment at a time when students were beset with homesickness and loneliness are the causes of this stress. An association was made between the passage of time and a gradual decrease in acculturative stress; however, this was not a generalisable process; there was fluctuation not only in experience across the student body but also in the individual's subjective sense of success across different aspects of life in the new country. This led to the conceptualisation of the adjustment journey as an unpredictable and dynamic process that is experienced differently among sojourners and fluctuates throughout the sojourn as a result of a host of individual, cultural and external factors. The relevance of this study to tourism scholars comes from drawing parallels between the long-stay tourist and the international student who represents an important segment of international travel. However, a gap in the literature exists on the impact of tourism on the tourist that this study helps to fill.

As there are many Arab students seek to earn an international degree, this research article aims to explore the factors that influence Arab students' adaptation to the foreign cross-culture of the USA and how it is related to their academic achievement. Exploring these factors will introduce different insights into the effectiveness of adaptation and studying in a foreign country and earning an international degree. Besides, this study contributes to the body of knowledge of international higher education by including Arab students as a less-researched group. Arab students' adaptation process is explained in terms of the Cross-cultural Adaptation Theory (Kim, 2001).

This qualitative research study was conducted using a focus group discussion (FGD). Multiple face-to-face interviews were conducted to obtain data from the participants. Participants were divided into four groups, each female group contained nine participants and each male group contained seven participants. The researcher explained to each group independently about their perception, beliefs and attitude toward earning international degrees, the adaptation to the host culture and their academic achievement. The researcher carried out five FGDs for each group. Each interview continued for 60 minutes in length. All participants received a consent form. The discussions were audio-recorded and then transcribed.

Arab students are a group of enthusiastic learners; however, their feelings of homesickness enable them to develop overwhelming sorrowful emotions, howbeit their communication with their ethnic group facilitates the adaption and acceptance of the host cultures, which requires quite some time to adjust to new surroundings. Arab students are recognized with high academic achievements; nevertheless, they require prolonged periods to complete course assignments. American society gives international students a warm welcome; this may encourage other Arab students to consider earning an American degree and prepare themselves for this intercultural transition.

This is subjective qualitative data; some limitations need to be addressed when interpreting the findings. Participants are English as a Second Language (ESL)learners, which may influence their word choice during the discussion. Interesting future research could be related to designing an assessment model to evaluate the academic achievement of ESL in different methods that focus on their achievement motivations and communication skills.

Based on the findings, professors can integrate the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) to help multi-cultural students to learn and earn an international higher education degree.

Higher education institutions can offer more social multi-cultural opportunities to include multi-cultural students and develop their social skills to facilitate the adaptation process to the new host culture.

This qualitative research study represents an original work of the researcher, and it has not submitted elsewhere. All research ethical codes were followed by the researcher and participants. There is no fund for this research project.