Predictors Of Global Self-Worth And Academic Performance Among Regular Education, Learning Disabled, And Continuation High School Students

Adolescence, Fall, 1998 by Dudley J. Wiest, Eugene H. Wong, Dennis A. Kreil

Annual family income was moderate to high, with 61% of the students living in households with incomes over $40,000. While the modal educational level for both mothers and fathers was high school and some college, 42% of fathers and 44% of mothers had a high school education or less. On the other hand, the upper end of the educational continuum was also well represented, with 34% of fathers and 24% of mothers having a bachelor's degree or higher.

Only slightly more than half of the students (53%) reported having never committed a crime, while 21% reported 1 or 2 crime incidents, 6% reported 3 or 4 crime incidents, and 20% reported 5 or more. Thirty-seven percent reported that they never consumed alcohol, while 38% reported drinking less than once a week, 16% once or twice per week, and 9% three or more times per week. A large majority (71%) reported never using drugs, while 13% used them less than once a week and 16% used them once a week or more.

Over half the students reported having an outside job: 10% worked 10 hours or less each week, 26% worked 11 to 25 hours, and 17% worked over 25 hours. More than half of the students also reported some involvement in extracurricular activities, with one-third participating in two or more such activities. Over half the students reported involvement in activities with their parents; 20% spend over 6 hours weekly in such activities, but almost half reported 2 hours or less. While 43% reported that they usually enjoyed these activities, 35% said they enjoyed them only occasionally or never. Not surprisingly, a greater number of students (66%) reported spending 6 or more hours each week with friends, and 95% indicated they usually or always enjoyed this time.

Results for the competence, control, and autonomy measures are presented in Table 2. With the exception of academic competence, which had a mean of 2.7, students perceived their competence levels to be high (3.0 or above).

Results for the measures of autonomy exhibited more variation and tended to be lower. This is to be expected for three of the four ASRQ subscales (identifying, introjection, and external), which actually measure the lesser forms of autonomy, and for three of the four Academic Coping Inventory subscales (anxiety, projection, and denial), which are construed to be less functional defense mechanisms. That is, lower ratings for these negative measures indicate that students experience them less frequently. However, lower mean scores were also found for warmth and support for autonomy provided by teachers and for parental support for autonomy. Parent involvement and peer autonomy support both received higher ratings.

Global Self-Worth as a Function of Competence and Autonomy

In order to address one of the study's major questions--whether measures of autonomy and competence can be used to predict a student's sense of self-worth--a stepwise multiple regression analysis was performed in which global self-worth served as the dependent variable and competence and autonomy were employed as independent variables. School status and a demographic item assessing depression were also included as possible predictors.