Supporting data for “Conceptualizing and Tracing Cultural Struggles of Lower-SES Students in Chinese Elite Universities”

This dataset contains the data collected for the dissertation "Conceptualizing and Tracing Cultural Struggles of Lower-SES Students in Chinese Elite Universitie". The research aims to (i) propose an integrative conceptual framework of cultural struggle that comprises two interrelated dimensions—disembeddedness and disorientedness—and developing a Cultural Struggles Scale (CSS) as a means of operationalizing this concept; (ii) unpack the dominant culture, both formal and informal, at China’s elite universities to trace how cultural struggles are produced and who are suffering from them; and (iii) explicate how some low-SES students could employ available cultural resources to help themselves moderate cultural struggles and what cultural resources are available for them to combat cultural struggles. These research objectives were achieved by three independent studies, through both quantitative and qualitative data analyses.

This dataset includes data collected from student surveys, individual interviews, and narratives of the "Excellent Graduating Seniors" (EGS) of both Eastern University and Western University. In terms of the survey, 816 students from the Western University and 696 students from the Eastern University participated in the study. Thirty students from the Eastern University and Nineteen students from the Western University participated in semi-structured interviews. In terms of the narratives, a total of 102 EU narratives from 2012 to 2021 and 142 WU narratives from 2015 to 2021 were collected.