Abstract

The problem. The purpose of the present study was to investigate how the selected religious/philosophical educational environments affected the belief system of students in the United States and the Republic Of China and whether students' belief systems were congruent with Eastern or Western perspectives as measured by the East-West Questionnaire. ;Procedure. Subjects were 207 Chinese and 118 American students who attended the randomly selected English classes from each of 4 universities during the first semester of 1991. The sample subjects were given the East-West Questionnaire pre-test in the first week of the semester, and the same test was given to the subjects at the end of the semester. A 2 x 2 analysis of variance on the pre-test scores was used to determine whether there were statistically significant differences between American and Chinese students. Also a 2 x 2 analysis of covariance on each of the post-test scores, using pre-test scores as the covariate, was done to test the continuous variable items that were significantly different from one another. ;Findings. There was a statistical significance between Chinese and American students; the former scored more Eastern than the latter. The differences could mostly be attributed to beliefs about spiritual matters and the rationality of man . There was a significant difference found between the two nationalities on the two measures after a one-semester period. No significant differences were found between Christian and secular university students, fields of study, or gender. ;Conclusions. The overall results of this study indicated that Chinese students' belief systems were not significantly different from American students' belief systems. Only the beliefs about man and spirituality reflected Eastern cultural traditions. Different religious school environments did not cultivate any changes in their students' belief systems after a one-semester period, which indicated students' belief systems gained only limited influence from the campus environments. ;Recommendations. Further research on whether Westerners' belief systems will be affected by the Chinese educational environment is needed. Longitudinal research using the same questionnaire, same types of subjects, and Buddhism-oriented schools is recommended