The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of social support and stress perceived by children on their self-concept, and to provide basic knowledge about the formation of the children's positive self-concept. In order to achieve the objectives...
The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of social support and stress perceived by children on their self-concept, and to provide basic knowledge about the formation of the children's positive self-concept. In order to achieve the objectives of this study, the research problems are established as follows:
1. what effect does the social support perceived by elementary school students have on their self-concept?
2. what effect does the stress perceived by elementary school students have on their self-concept?
3. what effect does the social support and stress perceived by elementary school students have on their self-concept?
The subjects of this study were 350 students in the fifth and sixth grades of five elementary schools located in Gumi-si, Geongsangbuk-do. For the measurement of social support perceived by children, Myung-Sook Kim’s scale(1994) was used, which was developed by combining Dubow and Ulman(1989)’s and Harter(1985)’s elementary school children's social support scale. For the measurement of stress perceived by children, the Korean children's day-to-day stress scale developed by Mi-Hyun Han and An-Jin Yoo(1995) was used after modification and supplementation to make it suitable for this study. And for measurement of children’s self-concept, the scale for the students in upper grades of elementary schools, which was created and categorized by Hee-Jun Yoon(1984) was used after modification and supplementation to make it suitable for this study.
With the collected data, the frequency and percentage was calculated using the SPSS 19.0 statistical program in order to identify the general background of the subjects of the study and the Cronbach's α coefficient was calculated in order to verify the reliability of the measurement tool. And a simple and a multiple regression analysis were performed in order to analyze each independent variables’ and their sub-factors’ effects on the dependent variables.
The results of this study can be summarized as follows.
First, as the result of examining the effect of social support on their self-concept perceived by children, all of the sub-factors of the social support - friend support, family support and teacher support - significantly influenced their self-concept. As for the relative contribution of the sub-factors of the independent variable, friend support has the highest effect on self-concept, then the family and teacher support influenced it.
Second, as the result of examining the effect of stress on self-concept perceived by children, among the sub-factors of the independent variable, stress - parents, home environment, friends, academic, teachers and school stress, it indicated that the factors significantly affecting on self-concept were home environment and friends stress. As for relative contribution of these two sub-factors, the friends stress had a greater effect on it than the home environment stress.
Third, as the result of examining the effect of social support and stress on self-concept perceived by children, both of the social support and stress significantly influenced the children's self-concept. And among them, stress is inversely correlated to the self-concept. As for the relative contributions of the two independent variables, social support had a greater effect on the self-concept than stress.
In this study, by examining what effects the social support and stress perceived by children have on the children's self-concept, it is expected to be able to help in the formation and development of the children's positive self-concept based on its result.