The National Coalition for the Homeless (1985) reported an estimate of over 220,000 school-aged children who are considered homeless on any given night. For homeless children, the additional loss of a stable environment and friends, coupled with a lack of basic necessities, increases their stress to exorbitant amounts. However, there have been few empirical studies that have examined both psychosocial stress and the effects of stress management on homeless children. The present study proposed, based on Maslow's hierarchy of needs model, that severe stress must be addressed among homeless children in order to help them thrive in an ever increasing stress-filled society. Fifty-two homeless children, living with their families in two family shelters in Central Florida participated in the study. / A quasi-experimental pre-post control group design was utilized to examine the effectiveness of a four session stress management training package on elementary school-age children. It was hypothesized that such training would reduce stress and improve the children's self-esteem, social competencies and behavior. It was also hypothesized that homeless children's pretest scores on the four dependent variables: Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory (1981), Coddington's Life-Events Scale (1981), Stress Response Scale (1983), and Achenbach's Child Behavior Checklist (1983) would be significantly different than the general population. The relationship between psychosocial stress and length of homelessness was also examined. / Homeless children's mean scores, when compared to normative group data score, were statistically higher demonstrating clinically significant levels of stress. Treatment group children's mean scores displayed noticeable gains, indicating improvement in self-esteem, social competencies and behavior. Repeated measures ANOVA analysis found no statistically significant differences on the dependent variables between children in the treatment and control groups. T-tests conducted on the length of homelessness and psychosocial stress, (as indicated by pretest mean scores), showed no statistically significant relationship. Possible explanations of the findings, along with implications for practice and research are given. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 56-01, Section: A, page: 0356. / Major Professor: Dianne H. Montgomery. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1995.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_77337 |
| Contributors | Davey, Timothy L., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 218 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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