self esteem

This topic submitted by Brad, Jon, July, Jess (shumakbt@muohio.edu) at 5:48 pm on 10/31/01. Additions were last made on Friday, April 19, 2002. Section: Dorsey

Group D (Brad, Jess, Julie, Jon)
Joseph Dorsey
Lab packet
Miami’s Self Esteem
Abstract: In this study we plan to determine the average self-esteem on the Miami campus, either high or low. Then from that information we are going to take results from another survey that, we will give out, determining if there is a relationship between high/low self esteem and the questions on the survey. College is a very turbulent time and determining factors or results of self-esteem can be very important to the suppression of low self-esteem on a college campus.
Introduction:
Our purpose for the Student Generated Lab is to discover what forms of self-esteem are present on the Miami campus and does the difference between high or low esteem matter when concerning social competence/comfort also do these things correlate with other events and tasks that are done by many Miami students. The subjects will be tested to find if they have social comfort, which is the way in which they act in a public setting. Also we will be testing high and low self-esteem, which is the feelings one has towards themselves, good being high and bad being low. We believe that there is a relationship between social comfort and self-esteem; we also think that these feelings are linked to feelings and actions that students participate in on a daily basis. Doing this project will give us a general idea about how many students on our campus are actually feeling poorly about them selves. This is an important issue especially for people in college where they have to interact with so many people on a daily basis, feeling this way can cause a person in a very normal situation to feel uncomfortable to the point where they cannot accomplish their goals.

Literature Review:
There have been many studies done in the field of self-esteem; it’s a pretty unknown idea. Much has been done with the development of self-esteem, many wonder whether it is a problem that is obtained in older life or if people can detect signs of it early on in childhood. From this question many studies have been done with children, for example in “Strange Situation”, conducted by Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, and Wall, (1992). The experiment involved a number of children all around the age of 14 months, accompanied by their mothers; these children were taken into a lab room, which contained many objects that most children like playing with. Then from behind a one way mirror the researchers observed what the children’s reactions were. Then after a short while they removed the mother with out the children knowing. Then observed the child’s reaction once again. Then after making the observation they let the mothers back in and observed once again. In 25% of the cases they ran around showing little attention to their mothers and cared little when the mother was absent. These children are called avoidant children. These children are willing to explore but lack a sense of belonging. Another 15% of the children were classified as ambivalent. These children were apprehensive about leaving their mother and when the mother was removed they became distressed and scared. The last classification concerns 60% of the children; they were classified as securely attached. These children show a healthy balance between adventure and closeness to their mother. It would appear that these findings are related to self-esteem, and sure enough additional research has supports this idea. (Brown, 199)
Another test done was at University of Metlafth where they tested self-esteem against physical self-image of unmarried males. They took 25 students from each grade and gave them self-esteem surveys and other surveys that would tell the conductors of the experiment what the students felt about their physical appearance, these test were compared and they found that those with poor thoughts of their own bodies, more often than not, had low self-esteem. (Yagishir 1996)
Michael B. Frisch PhD did another experiment from the University of North Carolina. His experiment involved a 36-question test asking about personal history, feelings of self worth, and physical feelings. His experiment involved 789 non-clinical adults from 12 different states. His purpose was to get an idea of what level of self-esteem the average person in America had. His result was what he expected, his observations showed that on an already developed 10 point scale, 10 being highest and 1 being lowest, that the average American was between 4 and 6. He thus found the scale to be accurate. Our research is much like that of the three previous experiments our goal is to find connections between everyday events and self-esteem and social comfort. We are doing this experiment specifically to Miami University because the people in our school are unique in that there are socially and academically diverse groups of people that attend this school.
We will determine whether the students have high or low self-esteem by taking a volunteer sample and giving them The Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (1965) , which is a test used to measure global self-esteem. “The Rosenberg self-esteem scale is one of the most widely used instruments for measuring self-esteem in research settings. It focuses on people’s general feelings toward themselves, without referring to any specific quality or attribute. Half of the items are worded in a positive direction (‘on the whole I am satisfied with myself’); the other half are worded in a negative direction (‘All in all, I am inclined to feel that I am a failure’). (Brown 194)
In addition to the scale on self-esteem we plan to test the comfort and competence that Miami students feel in a social situation. To test this we plan to use The Texas Social Behavior Inventory, “This scale is often used as a measure of global self esteem, but it actually measures how comfortable and competent a person feels in social situations.” (194)

Materials and Methods:
The Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale
SA – strongly agree, A – agree, D – disagree, SD – strongly disagree

1. On the whole, I am satisfied with
myself. SA A D SD
2. At times I think I am no good at
all. SA A D SD
3. I feel that I have a number of
good qualities. SA A D SD
4. I am able to do things as well as
most other people. SA A D SD
5. I feel I do not have much to be
proud of. SA A D SD
6. I certainly feel useless at
times. SA A D SD
7. I feel that I'm a person of worth, at
least on an equal plane with others. SA A D SD
8. I wish I could have more respect
for myself. SA A D SD
9. All in all, I am inclined to feel
that I am a failure SA A D SD
10. I take a positive attitude toward
myself. SA A D SD

To determine the score, first reverse the scoring for the five negatively worded items (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 8) as follows 0=3, 1=2, 2=1, 3=0. Then, add up your scores across the 10 items. Your total score should fall between 0 and 30. Higher numbers indicate higher self-esteem.

The Texas Social Behavior Inventory

By using these two standardized tests we can make a pretty good assumption as to the self-esteem as well as the social awareness of the general population of Miami. Each person will take both tests and each person will receive a number to ensure confidentiality. After that is done we will compare the two tests to see if there is any correlation between the two. After both of these tests are done we are going to then distribute a third test. This third test, created by our group, asks general questions about everyday life. This test will be administered in order to compare the ideas of low or high self-esteem and social situations and if they have affects on things such as school or consumption of alcohol or drug use. This test will consist of 10 yes/no and 5 fill in the blank questions; these tests as well as the ones previous will be numbered with a specific number in order to compare the results.

1. Is your GPA above a 3.2? yes / no
2. Do you smoke cigarettes? yes / no if so how many a week -
3. Do you drink alcohol? yes / no if so how often/how much -
4. Do you sleep well at night? yes / no
5. Do you have a close relationship
with your family? yes / no
6. Do you have any siblings? yes / no
7. Do you smoke marijuana? yes / no if so how much -
8. Did you want to come to college? yes / no
9. Now that you are here do you enjoy
college? yes / no
10. Do you peers think you are a social yes / no
person?
11. How many hours a day are you in your dorm? ____________
12. What kind of music do you listen too? ____________
13. Do you live in a city, suburb, or country setting? ____________
14. Are you an only child, oldest, youngest, or middle child? ____________
15. Are you happy, sad, or impartial to be away from home? ____________
16. Are you a member of any campus organizations, if so which one(s)?
(answer below)

The idea of this experiment is to determine if there is a correlation between high/low self-esteem and social comfort ability. Also this experiment is to see if either self-esteem or social comfort has a correlation with different personal activities that many college students tend to get involved in. Another thing we are going to try and determine is if these things are significant factors specifically on our Miami campus. We personally feel that this idea of self-esteem is a very important idea especially during the college years when being down on yourself could effect your performance in school or that critical point when you are forced to come out of your shell to make new friends and meet new people. Low self-esteem would make this time a very difficult and lonely time. During our designated class period in which we are issued our group will have the members of the class take the tests to add to our data. Following that they will help us sort and compare results of previously tested students. After testing a number of people and assigning each person a number we will compare their tests. First, we will compare the two self esteem tests, if both turn out high or low then that number will be tested against the third survey. If the self-esteem surveys output conflicting results then we will discard that subject stating that their esteem is undeterminable. After all the high and low self-esteem subjects are tested and compared against the questionnaire survey that we created. We will search for comparisons among the highs and also among the lows, comparing them to each other to find if certain activities are associated with a certain high or low self-esteem.

Bibliography:
Brown, Jonathan D. The Self. University of Washington: McGraw Hill, 1998.

Timeline of Events

Week of September 17th- Our group brainstormed ideas for our student generated lab. We made our project idea concrete. We also began researching self-esteem and ways of testing it.

Week of September 24th- Our group completed the original lab idea and research. We turned in our original proposal and also posted our proposal on the internet.

Week of October 1st- We completed the second revision of our lab proposal.

Week of October 8th- We began making copies of surveys, and we distributed them for people to begin filling out.

Week of October 15th- Began to compile information and data from the surveys.

Week of October 22nd- We completed our revision of our lab packet.

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