Many educators and psychologists believe self-esteem is an important variable in the educational process. An adequate level of self-esteem is recognized as being essential for students because it may affect their level of achievement and general state of well being. Self-report measures are the most commonly used techniques to evaluate children's perceptions of themselves. Children's self-reports are valuable since certain aspects of internalized problems are usually difficult for others to identify. Sociometrics, or peer reports, provide an alternative to self-report measures of self-esteem. Some studies have shown academic achievement, athletic ability, and socioeconomic status to correlate with sociometric status. Sociometric measures allow teachers to gather a wealth of information about their students quickly and easily.
One purpose of this study was to determine the degree of similarity between self-reports and peer reports as measures of self-esteem in middle school students. Confirmatory factor analysis showed that self-reports and peer reports were separate, but related constructs. A second purpose of the study was to determine the effects of verbal ability, peer reports, and self-reports on current achievement while controlling for whether or not the student had a learning disability. A recursive path model found verbal ability and type of student (learning disabled versus not learning disabled) to have strong direct effects on achievement, whereas self-reports and peer reports had no Significant effects. A third purpose of this study was to examine differences between students with and without learning disabilities on the peer reports and self-reports. Students with learning disabilities were found to have lower scores on all peer report and self-report measures. No relationship was found between type of student and choices made on peer nominations. / Ph. D.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/41303 |
| Date | 02 March 2006 |
| Creators | Troutman, Gretchen Creech |
| Contributors | Educational Research and Evaluation, Geller, E. Scott, Walls, Wemme E., Wolfle, Lee M., Fortune, Jimmie C., Keith, Timothy Z. |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Dissertation, Text |
| Format | viii, 91 leaves, BTD, application/pdf, application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
| Relation | OCLC# 29968615, LD5655.V856_1993.T697.pdf |
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