Premium
Global self‐evaluations and perceived instability of self in early adolescence: A cohort longitudinal study
Author(s) -
ALSAKER FRANÇOISE D.,
OLWEUS DAN
Publication year - 1993
Publication title -
scandinavian journal of psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.743
H-Index - 72
eISSN - 1467-9450
pISSN - 0036-5564
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9450.1993.tb01100.x
Subject(s) - psychology , longitudinal study , cohort , depression (economics) , developmental psychology , cohort study , clinical psychology , medicine , pathology , economics , macroeconomics
A cohort longitudinal design with four adjacent cohorts of students ( n = 1689) followed over two years was used to study key issues identified in the research literature on the development of self‐evaluations in early adolescence. There was no clear relationship between age/grade and self‐evaluations. We found no support for a “stressful periods” hypothesis with respect to self: Possible changes were very gradual and quite small. However, there was a consistent “relative age” effect implying that younger students within a grade had more negative self‐evaluations. There were small but consistent sex differences in self‐evaluations in favor of the boys; more detailed analyses of very negative self‐evaluations suggested that the early adolescent years are the period in which a sex difference in depression related symptomatology begins to emerge. Finally, the usefulness of some kind of effect size measure and advantages and problems associated with a cohort longitudinal design were discussed.