Factors Influencing International Students’ Willingness to Seek Support in Canada
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This study examines factors influencing international students’ help-seeking behaviour in Canada using the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) framework. Semi-structured interviews with 19 international students from diverse backgrounds were analyzed using thematic analysis. Findings revealed that students exhibited selective, cautious approaches whereby help-seeking preferences are domain-specific and relationally strategic, matching problems to appropriate support sources based on expertise, shared experience, and willingness to help. Our findings demonstrate how TPB operates differently in cross-cultural contexts where students navigate dual cultural frameworks, while also revealing how multiple intersecting identities compound to create unique help-seeking contexts beyond TPB’s dimensions. We introduce “strategic non-help-seeking” as a key conceptual contribution: a deliberate, rational, decision-making process whereby students actively choose not to engage with support systems based on careful evaluation of costs, benefits, and contextual constraints. Findings underscore the need for Canadian institutions to move beyond one-size-fits-all approaches and toward culturally responsive, accessible support systems recognizing international students’ diverse, intersecting needs.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.007 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".