Abstract
Majority of Pakistani postgraduate international students are accompanied by their co-ethnic dependents in the U.S., however, the acculturative process of this understudied population in a new cultural environment with a spouse is still unknown. This could be due to stereotypical view of international students as ‘single’ based on contextual gap in the previous literature. Drawing on Kim’s Integrative Communication theory, the role of marital satisfaction as mediator was introduced as a new predictor of acculturation to expand the contextual element in the theory. Furthermore, the co-ethnic partners who travel with the primary sojourner from one cultural environment to another do not fit in the definition of ‘ethnic’ groups as in Kim’s Integrative Communication theory. The present study, therefore, examined the role of contact quality in host interpersonal communication and consumption of American media outlets (television and websites) to predict acculturation of Pakistani graduate students in the U.S. using marital satisfaction as a mediator. Data was sourced from across the U.S., using snowball sampling via surveys. The quantitative analysis revealed that marital satisfaction with co-ethnic partner mediated the relationship between their contact quality in host interpersonal communication and psychological well-being, which was one of the two studied outcomes of acculturation in the present study.