Self concept and social participation in preschool children

Abstract

The present study was conducted to further investigatethe relationship between self concept and social participation.From the two educational upper class preschools involvedin this study 49 children qualified as subjects withreference to age, SES and intact family status. Half of thesubjects were 4 year old and half were 6 year old. The subjectswere matched for sex.Each child's play during free play sessions wasobserved for a ten minute sample on five occasions.Tizard's scale of social participation was used toassess social. principation and a total social participationscore was computed for each subject. The Children's SelfSocial Constructs Test was used to measure eleven aspects ofself-social relations: preference for mother, preference forfather, preference for friends preference for teacher, identificationwith mother, identification with father, identificationwith friends, identification with teacher, realism forsize, need for social contact, and self esteem. This instrument yielded eleven subscores.The self concept was also measured by the Early Childhoodself concept index. This instrument yielded a total selfconcept score.Pearson product moment correlations between socialparticipation and each of the other variables were carriedout, and t-test were used in this investigation. Analysis ofdata was organized around three main hypotheses. It waspredicted that correlations either positive or negative wouldexist between each of the 11 self-social constructs. It washypothesized that sex 'differences would exist in nine of theself social constructs. It was also hypothesized that therewould be age differences in each of the self social constructs.The hypothesis for correlations was rejected for 10constructs and retained for one construct. The resultsindicated a significant relation between social participationand preference for peers. T-test results indicated signifi-cant sex diffTrences for 2 self social constructs. Boys werehigher in preference for father and girls were higher in preferencefor teacher. T-test analyses also indicated significantage differences for three self-social constructs. Fouryear olds had higher scores for preference for friends andneed for social contact, while 6 year olds were higher inpreference for teacher.The significant relation between social participationand preference for friends indicated that socially participativesubjects showed a greater preference for their peersover other significant adults. Sex differences were discussedin terms of- sex role socialization. Age differences morediscussed in relation to peer and adult-child social developmentand social and socialization influences.