Self-concept of adolescent boys and girls of 11th and 12th standard of Kolkata city: A comparative study

Pages:1-5
Banhisikha Bhattacharya (Students Counselor, Institute of Technology, Kolkata)
Sibnath Deb (Department of Applied Psychology, Pondicherry University, Pondicherry)

The objective of the present study was to understand the self-concept of 11th and 12th standard adolescent boys and girls of Kolkata city. It was hypothesized that the self-concept of adolescents with respect to gender and educational standard will differ significantly. A group of 370 adolescents (182 boys and 188 girls) from six schools were covered in the study and they were selected following multi-stage sampling technique. A Semi-structured Questionnaire and Self-concept Scale were used for data collection. The study was carried out in 2011. The mean values of overall self-concept were found to be 169.7 for adolescent boys and 159.9 for adolescent girls i.e., the self-concept of adolescent boys was significantly higher compared to girls (p<.01). Further analysis of data revealed statistically significant difference (p<.001) between boys and girls with respect to components of self-concept like health and sex appropriateness, abilities, self-confidence, worthiness, present, past and future, beliefs and convictions, feeling of shame and guilt, and emotional component i.e., mean score of adolescent boys were significantly higher than the means score of girls with respect to the said components of self-concept. On the contrary, girls were found to be significantly higher in beliefs and convictions components compared to boys. No significant difference was observed between boys and girls with respect to self-acceptance and sociability components. So far as educational standard is considered, students of 11th standard were found to have higher mean score than the students of 12th standard in most of the components of self-concept and significant difference was found in four components only like health and sex appropriateness, abilities, self-acceptance and emotional component.