Advisor(s)
Loucrecia Collins
Committee Member(s)
Andrew McKnight
John A Dantzler
Susan L Davies
Evelyn L Nettles
Document Type
Dissertation
Date of Award
2015
Abstract
Understanding the significance of one’s ethnic group is pivotal to comprehending and defining one’s overall process of self-perception, its influence on academic achievement, and probability for future success as well as personal fulfillment, especially among adolescents (Hill, Mance, Anderson, & Smith, 2012). Consequently, an adolescent’s view of self is often directly associated with personal interactions with individuals closest in nature and proximity. To explore the effects of self-perception among fifth-grade adolescents, a quantitative study was conducted to examine physical appearance and self-worth disparities among pre-adolescent Black, Hispanic, and White youth. For this research, three racial identity developmental theories were applied, observed, and evaluated to assess student perceptions as related to racial/ethnic demographic as well as BMI, parental income, gender, and levels of parental education. To test these predictors, the researcher used cross-sectional data from Healthy Passages, a three-community study of 5,250 fifth-graders and their parents. Linear regressions examined the relationships between self-perceptions of physical appearance and self-worth to race/ethnicity, parent education, parent income, BMI, and gender differences. Results from this investigation found that gender had no significant relationship to fifth grade Self-Perception of Self-Worth. Similarly, household income had no relationship to the fifth grade Self-Perception of Physical Appearance. The only variables that had a substantial predictive relationship to Self-Perception of Self-Worth for fifth graders were Black, Hispanic, parent education, household income, and BMI. The only variables that had a substantial predictive relationship to Self-Perception of Physical Appearance were Gender, Black, Hispanic, education of caregiver, and BMI. If a child is Black, the decrease in self-perception of Self-Worth was 0.365 points; the decrease in self-perception of Physical Appearance was 0.559 points. For Physical Appearance, a child’s gender and being Black had a positive relationship to a fifth grader’s self-perception. The same was true for Self-Worth, education level of caregiver, and household income, all of which had a positive relationship to a fifth grader’s self-perception of self-worth. Results suggested that addressing racial/ethnic and gender differences of discrimination could lead to considerable reductions in self-perception issues, including those related to physical appearance, among Black, White, and Hispanic youth.
ProQuest Publication Number
ISBN
978-1-339-31666-6
Recommended Citation
Moore, Jeffrey G., "Self-Perceptions And Social Comparison With A Primary Focus On Racial Identity In African American, Hispanic And Caucasian Fifth-Grade Children" (2015). All ETDs from UAB. 2506.
https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/etd-collection/2506
Comments
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