Social Structure and Self-Esteem in Young Children - Article Example

Social Structure and Self-Esteem in Young Children Since time in memorial, people believed in the adage, “No man is an island”. A human being needs people around him to live, to communicate, to grow, and develop. This need serves as the premise on how social structure is formed. What is social structure by the way? Social structure, as defined by Encyclopedia Britannica, is the distinctive arrangement of institutions whereby human beings in a society interact and live together. If family is the basic unit in a society, social structure is the basic unit of socio-economic stratification in a certain country. Social structure is so strong that it affects even the development of self-concept and self-esteem of individuals – even young children living in a certain community. This premise inspires academicians from Michigan State University and The John Hopkins University to investigate on the nature of self-esteem. In their quest, they found out that the fundamental difficulty in conducting a certain research on self-esteem is the lack of strong theoretical guidance for defining the appropriate domains of self-concept. Before we try to understand the study from a deeper perspective, let us first understand the basic difference of self-concept and self-esteem. Self-concept is basically how the person views himself/herself in relation to any number of characteristics. For example, how does he/she look? How does he/she stand? and so on. Self-esteem on the other hand is the overall judgment of his/her worth as a person. With these definitions in mind, we understand that a self-concept is directly proportional to the self-esteem of a person that starts from childhood to adulthood. Now, let us take a closer look on the study entitled “Social Structure and the Development of Self-Esteem in Young Children”. The study comes from the investigation of the nature and self-esteem in a large mixed race sample of urban children over their first four years of schooling, using the confirmatory factor analytic model. The rationale and the conceptual basis for this model lead the researchers to posit a five-dimensional structure – character, personal responsibility, academic, appearance, and athletic (Pallas, A., et. al., 1990). The objective of the study is to know whether the structure and the level of self-concept vary for different types of children. The hypotheses rely heavily on the invariance of self-esteem across groups and that the various facets of the self become more distinct as children mature. Prior to this study, there are other researches made that is related to the topic. For instance, Shavelson and Marsh (1986) analyzed the responses of children in Grades 2 through 5 to the Self-Description Questionnaire. They concluded that the factors in the self concept model become more distinct as children age. However, the researches felt that the research lacks a true longitudinal design thus, this specific study was established. I personally think that the method that was used by the researchers provides a good picture of the topic under investigation. It is good that they used a longitudinal design in this specific study because the main intention of longitudinal studies is to examine methodically the constitution of certain information typically for purposes of explanation and interpretation over time. In this specific study, the researchers analyze changes that take place after a while. Since children were the subject of the study, it is good that they take it into consideration that childhood is about change. Therefore, it is necessary to make use of research designs that could describe and interpret individual changes within and beyond a certain period of time. Because of this, the researchers used a true longitudinal design and a diverse population of children to have the validity and reliability of the result. The researchers used a stratified random sample of children entering the first grade in 20 Baltimore City public schools in 1982. A two-stage sampling was employed. One is with schools as the first stage unit and then the children within the school as the second stage unit. The researchers ensure that the sample is composed of mix of children that includes middle and working class whites and blacks. A total of 800 children served as the respondents of this study. The whole process started in the spring of 1983 when interviewers administered questionnaires to each of the respondents. These questionnaires include 23 items from an instrument developed by Dickstein (1972) to measure children’s self-esteem. This process continued for several years wherein the trained interviewers administered the same set of questionnaires in 1984 and 1986 respectively. In analyzing the data that was gathered, the researchers used a confirmatory factor structure, based on other exploratory analyses of Beginning School Study, on other data, on prior researches, and theorizing about the self-concept. The researchers rely heavily on Harter’s (1985) Self-Perception Profile for Children which assess self-perceptions of children in five specific domains: scholastic competence, social competence, athletic competence, physical appearance, and behavioural conduct. In addition to this, the researchers used a flexible confirmatory factor-analytic model postulating five dimensions of self-evaluation: personal character, personal responsibility, academic, athletic, and appearance. In all the analyses that follow, the scale of individual factors is established arbitrarily by using reference indicators. Overall, the researchers conclude that the hypothesized factor structure of children’s self esteem is highly credible at both the level of theory and the level of data. The study shows that the children being used in the sample would make successively finer distinctions in their self-concepts as they grow older. The correlations among self-esteem factors in 1983, 1984, and 1986 yields two key findings: First, the factors are correlated highly on each occasions. Children who rate themselves as good athletes also have a self-concept that they are responsible, attractive, good students, and having good character. When these students were re-evaluated after three years, the average intercorrelation among the five factors is .56. Second, the correlations among the factors decline somewhat over time; this somehow proves the hypothesis that the facets of self become more distinct as children mature. Inspection of individual self-esteem factor correlates over time reveals that a number of correlations lessen as children grow older. This pattern is clearest for the correlation between athletic and character self-perceptions. For the model comparisons across groups, tests of the five-factor model reveal no reliable sex differences in the structure of self-esteem. Moreover, confirmatory factor analyses of other conceivable structures also imply that the structure of self-esteem among young boys and young girls is identical. There are clear indications that the group differ in their average levels of self-esteem, especially for comparisons of boys and girls, and to black and white children. However, the respondents show little sign of substantial social class differences in level of self-esteem. By far, the most dramatic group difference is found in boys and girls on how they view their athletic abilities. Girls see themselves as much less competent at things athletic than boys. In every year of the study, girls rated themselves higher in personal character than boys. Young girls also report being more responsible than young boys, although the difference, when expressed quantitatively in standard form, is not as large as the difference in their character. One possible explanation for this is because girls are more exposed in domesticated tasks such as taking care of their younger siblings and helping their mother with the household chores. Girls have more positive self-concept than young boys academically. However, after few years, this difference lessens and becomes less reliable. While the respondents were finishing their fourth grade, girls held a less positive image of their bodies compare to the boys. This could be a reaction to the bodily changes experienced by girls during their puberty stage. When it comes to racial differences, during the first year when the study was conducted, white children rated their own characters more highly than the black children. However, this character difference disappeared in the following year. Black children reported more positive self-concepts in each of the five domains and perceived their character as slightly superior to that of white children, and saw themselves as slightly higher on personal responsibility. After all these data has been gathered, analyzed, and studied, the researchers conclude that the structure of self-esteem does not differ for boys and for girls, for blacks and for whites, for poorer and for richer children. Social class differences in the level of self-esteem are relatively small and inconsistent. Gender, however is an exemption, the researchers found a large difference between boys and girls and clear indications that this will increase with time. The evidences that were shown in this study are acceptable, however; I can find some loopholes on the gathering and interpretation of data. It is good that they used heterogeneous respondents through stratified sampling. Nonetheless, they only gathered the data through mere interview of the children. Although, the questions that were used in the interview were carefully selected, I think it would somehow be appropriate to use other forms of data gathering as well as data such as academic performance of these children, teachers’ anecdotal records, and other records from the guidance office where the children are studying. I only have one question lingering in my mind while studying this specific research: How sure are the researchers that the data that they got from children are reliable without double–checking it with other data that is readily available within the vicinity where that study is being conducted? Another factor that might somehow affect the reliability and the validity of the study is how did the researchers dealt with the respondents who transferred to another school while this research was being conducted? There are two research questions that I felt this study should have addressed are: First, What are the different societal factors that contribute to the self-esteem of children? Second, Is family background and child rearing also a contributory factor in the establishment of children’s self-esteem? Aside from those minor points, I could say that this is a good research which could be used as a stepping stone for other researches to be conducted in the near future. Works Cited: A.M. Pallas, et.al., Social Structure and the Development. Social Psychology Quarterly. 1990. Web. 16 Nov. 2010. C.M. Jude, et.al. How People See Others is Different from How People See Themselves: a Replicable Pattern Across Cultures. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Web. Nov. 2010. 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