Date of Award

2001

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Art

First Advisor

Pamela Nickels

Second Advisor

Marilyn Patterson

Third Advisor

Anita Sankar

Abstract

Peer relationships and self-esteem among early adolescents, as well as the relationship between the two, have been studied by various researchers in the past. The purpose of this correlational study was to determine the strength of the relationship between early adolescents' peer relationship problems and self: esteem. Specifically, this research studied early adolescents in grades five through eight in one suburban, White, middle class elementary school and three suburban, White, middle class junior high schools. Students completed the Self-Esteem Index and the Index of Peer Relations. Pearson correlations that were performed to analyze the data suggested a negatively-associated, linear, and strong relationship between adolescent self-esteem and peer relationship problems. A trend analysis suggested that self-esteem decreased slightly between grades six and seven and sharply decreased in grade eight. An independent sample t-test suggested that self-esteem was lower for adolescent males than for females. The results and limitations of th.is study, as well as implications for future research, are discussed.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

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