The Technology for Determining the Level of Development of Students’ Intercultural Communication Competence Through Testing

Аннотация

Intercultural communication competence (ICC) has become a core outcome of higher education in the context of accelerating globalization. The present study develops and validates an integrated testing technology designed to diagnose the degree to which undergraduate students have formed the cognitive, affective, and behavioral components of ICC. The technology combines principles of psychometrics with culture‑general theory and adapts them to the sociocultural realities of Uzbekistan’s tertiary sector. A mixed‑method sequential design was employed: first, item pools were generated on the basis of authoritative competence frameworks; second, the resulting test battery was administered to 486 students representing seven universities and nine academic majors; finally, quantitative indicators were triangulated with qualitative data from semi‑structured interviews. Results confirm high internal consistency (Cronbach’s α = 0.91) and construct validity, while exploratory factor analysis reveals a stable three‑factor structure congruent with cognition, empathy, and interactional sensitivity. Independent‑sample t‑tests demonstrate significant differences between students with intensive foreign‑language exposure and those without such experience (p 0.45) and cross‑loadings intercultural sensitivity and Byram’s descriptive model minimal, supporting theoretical coherence. of intercultural communicative competence, merging Convergent validity analysis showed a robust positive them into a tripartite structure: knowledge about correlation between composite test scores and IDI cultures, affective‑motivational ope