Self Concept and Socio-Economic Status in Elementary School Children

Abstract

In an earlier study which was part of a four year longitudinal investigation conducted under a large, federally funded Title III project,' it was found that children of low socio-economic status scored significantly higher than children of middle socio-economic status (Clark and Trowbridge, 1971; Trowbridge 1969, 1970a, 1970b) on a self concept instrument known as the Self Esteem Inventory (Coopersmith, 1967). The number of investigations of the relationship between self concept and socio-economic status (SES) has been increasing, but the relationship remains undetermined. Findings appear to be in conflict. A number of persons have postulated that children of low socio-economic status do actually reflect the negative image society holds of them (Ausubel and Ausubel, 1963; Erickson, 1963; Witty, 1967). Some investigations appear to support this thesis (Deutsch, 1960; Long and Henderson, 1968; Wylie, 1963), while others suggest no significant differences in self concept of children of different SES (Coleman, 1966; McDaniel, 1967; Scott, 1969). Studies by Clark and Trowbridge, 1971; Green and Rohwer, 1971; Soares and Soares, 1969, 1970; Trowbridge, 1969, 1970a, 1970b and Zirkel and Moses, 1971, indicate that by some criteria the self concept of low SES children may be even more positive than that of middle class children.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 85 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.