A participant-generated model of intercultural friendship formation, development, and maintenance between Taiwanese and Chinese students

This dissertation aimed to identify the factors that facilitated the friendship initiation, development, and maintenance between Taiwanese and Chinese students and the influential relationship among those factors. Nine Taiwanese and nine Chinese students studying at one Taiwanese university were recruited for this study. The Chinese students were in Taiwan for at least two years. The participants were friends with the other party for at least 8 months. This study was divided into three stages. In the first stage, participants were required to provide factors that facilitated their friendship with the other party. Fifty ideas were collected. In the second stage, participants were asked to clarify those factors and then categorize those factors. Fourteen categories were identified in this stage. The participants, then, voted on factors that affected their friendship formation, development, and maintenance with other party. Fifteen factors were voted the highest among those factors. Those 15 factors were imported into interpretive structure modeling (ISM) software for the next stage. In the third stage, 18 one-on-one interviews were conducted, and 18 ISM diagrams were generated. ISM provided a method to identify the influential relationship among those factors. According to the results, the friendship formation model was proposed. Five stages were identified in this model: exploring, matching, engaging, deepening and bonding.