This research analyzes the factors affecting adolescent's self-esteem formation. The influences that adolescent's self-esteem causes are analyzed in personal and environmental factors. We expect this analysis would be the fundamental resource for self...
This research analyzes the factors affecting adolescent's self-esteem formation. The influences that adolescent's self-esteem causes are analyzed in personal and environmental factors. We expect this analysis would be the fundamental resource for self-esteem improvement program that reflects specifications for male and female students.
To support this research, we ran survey to 550 middle school students one in a large city and another one in a small city. Excluding responders who participated without faith, responses 234 from male and 241 from female, total of 475, were actually used for this analysis.
To analyze the factors affecting adolescent's self-esteem formation, One-way Anova, Correlation Analysis, and Regression Analysis were performed.
The analysis showed the following.
First, we performed an examination to see if there is difference in student's self-esteem depending on the environment. According to the result, the only noticeable difference was shown in geographical locations, and teenagers who are in the small city had higher self-esteem than adolescents in the large city. The reason seemed to be that adolescents in the large city were stressed a lot more than adolescents in the small city by competing to be candidate for admissions.
Second, we performed an examination for a student's correlation between personal causes and self-esteem. We included the degree of self-satisfaction on appearance, the interior and exterior control, and ability perception as the sub-variables of the adolescent’ personal causes Looking at the correlation analysis results, among the personal causes, the degree of self-satisfaction on appearance, cognitive ability perception, social ability perception, and physical ability perception had significant relationships with self-esteem. With the results, it is proved again that there is a need for improvement on adolescents’ attitudes towards their degrees of self-satisfaction on appearance for the formation of positive self-esteem, and we confirmed that higher perception on their abilities or capabilities can provide positive effects on self-esteem.
Third, we studied the relationships between adolescents’ environmental backgrounds and self-esteem. Environmental backgrounds are constituted with the sub-variables of family environment and school environment. Family environment is divided into parents’ upbringing, family ties, and knowledge of parents’ conflict. School environment is divided into relationship with friends, and relationship with teachers. The results showed that among the environmental factors knowledge of parents’ conflict, and relationship with friends had significant correlations with self-esteem. That is, negative factors such as parents’ conflict had bigger effect on adolescents’ self-esteem than positive factors such as parents’ upbringing and family ties. Also, the result supported the assertion that good relationship with friends at school is essential for the formation of self-esteem of adolescents.
Fourth, we studied the research subject 4, the effect of gender difference on adolescents’ self-esteem, and the research subject 5, the how seriously the personal backgrounds and environmental backgrounds affect self-esteem according to gender difference. Although adolescents’ self-esteem did not show difference according to gender difference, there existed a difference on the degree of impact. To male adolescents, self-recognized factors, such as social ability perception, satisfaction on appearance, knowledge of parents’ conflict, and the interior and exterior control had impact on the formation of self-esteem. However, to female teenagers, the relationship factors, such as satisfaction on appearance, social ability perception, knowledge of parents’ conflict, relationship with teachers, and cognitive perception ability, in order, had impact on the formation of self-esteem.
With the result of study, we confirmed the factors affecting the adolescents’ self-esteem, and the differences of the variables that are significant to each gender on the improvement of self-esteem. The common factors included satisfaction on appearance, ability perception, knowledge of parents’ conflict, and relationship with friends. It casts that there is a need for improving adolescents’ perception on their appearances, making them believe the results by their abilities, and setting realistic goals. Also, special attention is needed for the good relationships with parents, and friends. We confirmed the difference of the variables that are significant to each gender. Ability factors should be emphasized for male adolescents, and relationship factors for female adolescents. It is not the high self-esteem itself, but the high performance on the areas where they consider important, that improves the degree of self-esteem. Therefore, it is required that we should help adolescents find these factors themselves to perform well.