Boredom coping profiles among international students in canada and canadian students: similarities and differences

Boredom has shown to associate with undesirable effects, but little is known about how international students differ from Canadian students in boredom coping. The purposes of this study are to validate Boredom Coping Scale and evaluate students’ differences in boredom coping styles based on 408 Canadian and 104 international students. The confirmatory factor analysis showed that the factor structure, loadings, and covariances were invariant across the two samples. In the latent profile analysis, the Canadian students were classified into three groups who used different combination of coping strategies: Reappraisers, Thinkers, and Criticizers, whereas the international students were grouped into two new categories: Persistent Students and Behaviourists. While Reappraisers and Criticizers are consistent with previous findings, Thinkers, who preferred coping with boredom cognitively through either approach or avoidance, is the new profile. Our results partly supported previous findings and showed that international students were different from Canadian students in boredom coping.