SELF-ESTEEM OF HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS IN RELATION TO THEIR SOCIO ECONOMIC STATUS

Abstract

Self-esteem reflects a person’s overall subjective emotionalevaluationofhisorherworth.Itisa judgment of oneself as well as an attitude toward the self. Self-esteem encompasses beliefs and emotions such as triumph, despair, pride, and shame. Socio-economic status to be significantly related to self-esteem. In general, those with higher socio-economic status report higher self-esteem than those with lower socio-economic status. The presentstudyattemptstoexamine the self –esteem of high school students in relation to their Socio-economicstatus.Thestudyis quantitative in nature and the sample consists of 200 students from schools located in Jammu city through Simple Random Sampling Technique. The main objective of the study is to study the significant difference in self-esteem of high school students at different level of socio-economic status, self-esteem of male and female high school studentsandtherelationship between self-esteem andsocio-economicstatus.InthisstudytwostandardizedtoolsnamelySelf –esteem inventory (SEI) developed and standardized by M.S Prasad and G.P. Thakur (1977), Socio-economic status scale (SESS) develop and standardized by Sunil Kumar Upadhyay and Alka Saxena (2008) have been used. The objectives of the study were: 1) to study the significancedifferenceinself-esteemofhighschoolstudentsatdifferentlevelofsocio-economic status, 2) to study the significance difference in self- esteem of male and female high school students and 3) to study the relationship between self-esteem and socio economic status. For analyzing the data-test, Anova and Pearson’s Co-efficient of correlation have been employed. The results indicate that there exists no significant difference in self- esteem of high school students at different levels of socio-economic status as well as in relationtogender.However,it was found that there exist significant positive relationship between self-esteem and socio economic status indicating that lower the socio-economic status, the lower would be the self-esteem of the high school students.