A Survey on Intercultural Contact (IC) among Iranian EFL Students: Validating a Questionnaire

Intercultural contact (IC) among students has received a great prominence in EFL and ESL contexts in recent years; therefore, this study was an attempt to modify and validate a questionnaire as an instrument to elicit the resources from which Iranian EFL students obtain their IC information. To reach this aim, a modified version of Peng and Wu’s questionnaire with 26 items and five factors was administered among 200 male and female Iranian EFL students from different language institutes in Tabriz, Iran. To determine the reliability and validity of the modified questionnaire, the statistical analyses of the model and fitness of the questionnaire were conducted by SmartPLS3 software. The results of reliability analyses using three measures of Cronbach’s alpha, combined reliability (CR) and average variance extraction (AVE) demonstrated that the questionnaire has a good reliability. Moreover, the results of construct crossvalidated communality (Q²) proved the construct validity of the questionnaire. Additionally, the results of correlation coefficient matrix and p value for all the latent variables demonstrated that all the paths and relationships in the model are significant and the model is a good fit. This study also clarifies the implication of such a questionnaire for ELT and presents some suggestions for future studies.