Needs Analysis-Accompanying Spouses_Caitlin Jackson & Angelica Huang

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Needs Analysis Report: Accompanying Spouses 1

Needs Analysis Report:

Accompanying Spouses

Caitlin Jackson & Angelica Huang

Monterey Institute of International Studies

10/25/2011


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Introduction and Rationale

When people are sent abroad for work, especially for any relatively long length of time, it

is sometimes the case that their spouse accompanies them. In China, the lives these couples lead

while there could be described as luxurious. The couple (and their family if they have one) is

often put up in a nice apartment in a well-to-do part of town. As is often part of expatriate life in

China, these couples are also provided housekeepers, nannies, drivers, etc.

However, all of this convenience can have downsides, especially for an accompanying

spouse. First, with people at their disposal to do their cleaning, shopping, help with the kids, and

shuttle them from place to place, there is very little they need to venture out to do on their own.

Add this to the fact that many accompanying spouses often have little knowledge of the language

or cultural before arriving and usually lack a peer support system (as one sometimes does when

they move to a new place), and the life of an accompanying spouse in China can be frustrating

and lonely. Furthermore, it is not uncommon for accompanying spouses to encounter trouble in

communicating with the very people hired to make their lives easier. Though many such people

often have at least a basic understanding of English, mutually low language levels and cultural

differences between employer and employee often make it difficult and frustrating to

communicate seemingly simple things like expectations and to give feedback.

This is where we come in. Our goal in doing this project is to design a course that will

provide accompanying spouses in China with language skills, cultural knowledge, and a peer

support group so that they might better enjoy their stay in China. Our course will be held in

Shanghai, China (based on our familiarity and the fact that all questionnaire participants lived in

Shanghai as well). For the purposes of this project, we will assume that all students have spouses

that work for and have been sent to China by the same company and that they will all arrive at

the same time. Based on previous knowledge we know that, of those people who participated in


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our questionnaire, six weeks was the shortest length of stay in China. Accordingly, our course

will be six weeks long.

The following is a description of our pre-course needs analysis and a discussion of the

implications that the results have for our course design.

Instruments and Timeline

In order to more clearly understand the language and social support needs of

accompanying spouses in China, we wanted to collect information from people with previous

experience in this area (specifically, people who were at one time an accompanying spouse in

China). Since our contacts now live in different places around the world, it would have been

hard for us to conduct face-to-face interviews or use a traditional paper-based survey for our data

collection. Therefore, we used Google Forms to create an online survey - an option we felt would

be much more convenient for our contacts. This technology also made data collection easier for

us as researchers, as it automatically inputs participant responses into a spreadsheet in a Google

Document.

Our survey consisted of three sections with questions focusing on different content.

Question types included multiple choice, checkboxes/select all that apply, paragraph texts, and

choose from a drop-down list. In Section 1, About You, questions were designed to collect

demographic information about the participants. In Section 2,About Your Experience, we were

looking to acquire information about the activities and social interactions that participants were

involved in while in China. We also asked about their Chinese language experience. Finally, in

Section 3,About the Course, participants were requested to provide their personal preferences


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and interests in relation to details relevant to the course itself (for example, topics to be covered,

number of meeting times per week, etc.).

Our survey was completed on October 4, 2011, at which point we sent it out to our

contacts. As of October 17, 2011, five participants had completed our survey. We are

therefore analyzing the results and findings based on these five responses, all of which

provided us with valuable information for the designing of our course.

Findings

The five completed questionnaires we received provided us with the following data:

All five of the participants were female, three of which were between 31 and 35 years of

age. Of the remaining two participants, one was 41 to 50 years old and one was 51 to 60. Four of

the five participants were from the United States, one was from Japan. All five, however, lived in

Shanghai, China. A majority of the women lived in a gated community while in China (see

Figure 1 below). The womens descriptions of their spouses profession varied (two engineers,

one in business, one facility manager, and one international automotive VP).

Figure 1: Living Arrangements in China

60%20%

20% gatedcommunity

hotel-condo

apartmentcomplex


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The women gave a variety of responses when asked what activities they participated in

while in China. Figure 2 below is a representation of these responses based on the frequency

with which each was mentioned.

Figure 2: Activities in China(ordered according to the number of participants that mentioned them (shown in parentheses))

Shopping (3)

Church-related activities (3)Travelling (2)

Walking/running (2)

Exercise (2)Sightseeing (2)

Dining out (2)Bike riding (1)

Hanging out with friends (1)Language lessons (1)

Going to bars (1)Home-room mother (1)

When asked what things they would have liked to do in China, but didnt, the womens

responses were actually quite similar. Four of the women stated that they wished they could have

travelled more outside of Shanghai. One woman said she wished she had visited an orphanage.

The following question inquired as to why they did not do those things they mentioned wanting

to do (i.e. travelling more and visiting an orphanage). The responses were varied: two of the five

women said that they didnt know where to find such activities, one indicated that she didnt

have time, one said she didnt travel more because of the language barrier and lack of anyone to

travel with, and finally, one said it was hard to travel with little kids.

Four of the five women that took our questionnaire said that they did travel outside of

Shanghai during their stay in China. The woman who said she did not travel outside of Shanghai


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also stated that she had no desire to do so. Of the four who had travelled, three indicated that

they had encountered trouble while travelling. One woman said she encountered

miscommunication due to language and cultural differences, one said she didnt have anyone to

travel with, while another said that the language was an issue for her and that it was troublesome

to have to plan ahead for a translator and/or driver. Four out of the five women also said that they

employed someone in a service industry, be it a housekeeper, nanny, driver, etc. Three of those

four women reported the following difficulties in their interactions with these employees:

1)My ayi (housekeeper and/or nanny) did not speak any English. She also only

understood her own dialectic. So, even though I spoke a fair amount of Mandarin, she

couldn't understand me. We made it work, but had a few miscommunications along theway.

2)Sometimes it's hard to explain my expectations and requirements to them because

they neither understand English or Japanese.

3)We only had someone come in once a week to clean the bathrooms and clean the

floors. The reason we didn't have someone full-time was because it was too difficult to

train due to the language (barrier). Plus I didn't like the way they interacted with the

kids Our driver was fine - he spoke English.

The women that took our questionnaire all reported having a relatively low level of

Chinese. Three of the five classified themselves as very beginner (the lowest of the four level

choices on our questionnaire), while the remaining two classified themselves as basic survival

(the next level up). Furthermore, the majority of the women reported that they learned Chinese

by employing a private tutor (see Figure 3).


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Figure 3: Method of Chinese Learning

Each of the four responses (one stated do not live in China anymore) we received to the

question If such a course were offered, how often would you be willing to meet was different,

ranging anywhere from three times a week to once every two weeks. As for how much time the

women would be willing to spend to get to a class such as ours, most said 30 minutes to an hour

(see Figure 4).

Figure 4: Amount of Time Willing to Spend in Transit

The last part of questionnaire dealt with course topics. Of the eight options provided, the

most popular topics to be covered in class were food and shopping (see Figure 5). The

60%20%

20% private tutor

doesn't speak

self-learned, picked

it up

60%

40% 30 min - 1hr

> 1 hr


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participants also provided information regarding which elective classes they would be interested

in taking, with Chinese cooking being the most popular (See Figure 6).

Figure 5: Course Topics Interested in Learning About(ordered according to frequency of mention (some participants chose more than one option))

Food (3)

Shopping (3)Social Life (2)

(nightlife, friends, etc.)Travel (1)

(incl. sightseeing, transportation, etc.)Art (1)

Fashion (1)Other: Daily Conversation (1)

Figure 6: Elective Class ChoicesChinese

cooking

calligraphy paper

cutting

tea

ceremony

traditional

musical

instrument(s)

Chinese

movies/dramas

Participant1

Participant2

Participant3

Participant4

Participant5

Discussion of Findings

The results of our survey revealed interesting information for us in designing this course. To

begin with, based on our findings in the demographic data portion of the survey, we learned that

we should cater our course to middle-aged, female housewives who are native speakers of

English or who have a high enough proficiency that they can take a class in English.


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The participants responses to questions about activities that they did and would like to

have done provided us with a starting point in determining our course content. The prospective

topics indicated in the responses also allowed us to examine possible communicative functions to

be included in our course. Moreover, the participants responses to these questions confirmed our

suspicions that they lacked resources, a social network and language skills to do the things they

wanted to do.

We learned that the majority of the participants did travel, regardless of their language

level, and they did experienced troubles in communication. This, again, confirmed what we

originally thought. Although their spouses professions were varied, we know that they all

worked for the same company. Therefore, we plan introduce general vocabulary relating to that

company as part of our course content. The fact that these all of our potential students will be

affiliated with the same company will also help us in establishing connection between them,

therefore strengthening the peer network component of our course.

The responses we got from the question about difficulties encountered in communicating

with service people were particularly interesting and enlightening. It even provided us with a

very clear function that we need to include in our course: expressing expectations and giving

feedback.

From the questions about their Chinese learning experience, we found that most of them

had all attempted to learn Chinese, but that most of them seemed to prefer more casual styles by

which to learn (tutors instead of formal schooling).

The participants indicated different preferences of class meeting frequencies. We had

originally assumed that all of the participants would want to meet more frequently during the

week. However, since our results showed such a wide range of preferences, we realized that as


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course designers, we may have the flexibility to decide the frequency of class meetings based not

only on students preferences but also other relevant factors. On a similar topic, however, we

were surprised to learn about students willingness to spend a relatively long time to get to the

class. This will also provide us with flexibility in choosing a location for the class. In addition,

due to the fact that the majority of the women lived in gated communities, we have determined

that it might be most convenient for our students if we hold our classes in such a gated

communitys activity center.

Last but not least, from the questions about preference of course and elective topics,

although some participants had clear favorites, others are open to a variety of relevant topics.

In general, we have found the responses to the survey extremely helpful as we move on

to determine the specifics for our curriculum design project. We will discuss the implications for

the syllabus in the following section.

Implications for the syllabus

The results of our needs analysis not only coincide with some of our original assumptions,

but also shed new light on aspects of our course design that we had not previously considered.

As we had anticipated, the results confirmed the need for this course. They showed that former

accompanying spouses did indeed experience miscommunication due to a language barrier and

cultural differences and did in some cases feel that they lacked a peer group to socialize with.

Since the overarching goal of designing this course is to help our students better enjoy

their time in China, we focused most closely on responses that describe troubles that previous

accompanying spouses encountered. In doing so, we discovered that the best way to help our

students avoid such troubles would be to teach them communicative functions. These will be

communicative functions that can be applied across different contexts such as bargaining,


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expressing expectations and giving feedback. Therefore, we have decided to use a functional

syllabus for our course. However, because functions need to be contextualized (Graves, 2009,

p.46) we have decided to teach these functions in topic-based units (shopping, travel, etc.).

Originally, we envisioned the course to be a somewhat intensive course, which may

require students to meet three or four times per week and include multiple elective classes.

However, after reading the descriptions of the activities they participated in and looking at their

feedback about the number of times they were willing to meet, we realized that a) these women

may not have as much as we have anticipated to attend this language class and b) it is possible

that they would not view a language course such as ours to be the priority we originally thought

it would be. For these reasons, we have decided that our course will be less intensive than we had

intended.

Finally, we also realized that we have more flexibility than we had originally thought,

both in terms of course content and course logistics. Though there were clear favorites in terms

of topics of interest, many participants also indicated that they are open to a variety of topics.

With this information, we have decided to set the first two weeks topics and negotiate the

following four weeks topics with the students after class starts. Logistically, students

willingness to spend a relatively long amount of time getting to class will provide us with much

flexibility in finding location.

Conclusion

In the process of doing this needs analysis, we learned the importance of selecting the

proper instrument and designing that instrument such that it allows us to collect the right kind of

data relevant to our course. In addition, we also learned that in analyzing the responses of the


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needs assessment, we may discover certain implications for course details that we may not have

previously anticipated. We, as researchers, should remain open-minded and be ready to

accommodate emergent patterns even if they conflict with our original ideas about our course

design.

Based on our original thoughts about our course and the results revealed from our needs

analysis, we now have a clearer picture of our curriculum design project. This needs analysis

provided invaluable information that will allow us to confidently move on to the next steps in

designing our course, which include defining goals and objectives as well as specifying course

organization.

Documents

Needs Analysis-Accompanying Spouses_Caitlin Jackson & Angelica Huang