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The Journal of SocialPsychologyPublication details, including instructions forauthors and subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/vsoc20

Dimensions of Children's Self-Concept as Predictors of SocialCompetenceJames P. Comer a , Norris M. Haynes a , MurielHamilton-Lee a , James Boger a & David Rollock aa Child Study Center , Yale University , USAPublished online: 30 Jun 2010.

To cite this article: James P. Comer , Norris M. Haynes , Muriel Hamilton-Lee , JamesBoger & David Rollock (1987) Dimensions of Children's Self-Concept as Predictorsof Social Competence, The Journal of Social Psychology, 127:3, 321-329, DOI:10.1080/00224545.1987.9713698

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Journal ofSocial Psychology, 127(3), 321-329

Dimensions of Children's Self-Conceptas Predictors of Social Competence

JAMES P. COMERNORRIS M. HAYNES

MURIEL HAMILTON-LEEJAMES BOGER

DAVID ROLLOCKChild Study Center

Yale University

ABSTRACT. The relationship between specific dimensions of children's self­concept and their social competence as assessed by their parents, teachers, and them­selves was examined in the present study. The relative predictive power of six self­concept dimensions in predicting children's assessment of their social competencewas also studied. Subjects were 253 randomly selected middle-school students in anortheastern, inner-city school system, their teachers, and their parents. Instrumentsused included the Tennessee Self-Concept Scale (TSCS) and the Social CompetenceScale (SCS). Children completed the Tennessee Self-Concept Scale and the chil­dren's version of the Social Competence Scale. Teachers and parents completed aslightly modified version of the Social Competence Scale. A correlational analysisindicated moderately high and significant Pearson moment correlation coefficients(p < .0 I) between self-concept dimensions and children's ratings of their own socialcompetence. A hierarchical stepwise multiple regression indicated that the six self­concept dimensions in combination accounted for 44% of the total variance, R.66, P < .01, in social competence ratings.

THE INFLUENCE of children's self-concepts on their psychosocial behaviorand overall school adjustment has been widely discussed. Their self­perceptions reportedly influence the manner in which they conduct them­selves in their classrooms, on the playground, as they interact with other chil­dren, and to some degree determine their attitude toward authority figures

Requests for reprints and for the scales used in the present study should be sent toNorris M. Haynes, Child Study Center, Yale University, 230 South Frontage Rd.,P.O. Box 3333, New Haven, CT065JO.

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322 Journal ofSocial Psychology

such as teachers, school counselors, psychologists, and other adults in theschool environment (Marsh, Parker, & Barnes, 1985; Phillips & Zigler, 1980;Sprigler, 1980).

Some researchers (Hathaway & Rhodes, 1979; Jones, Gray, & Jospotre,1982; Williams, 1978) have found that programs designed to enhance theself-concept of disadvantaged children resulted in significant improvementsin behavior and psychosocial functioning.

Although most of the evidence appears to favor strong correlations be­tween self-concept and psychosocial behavior, there are some researcherswho have failed to confirm this relationship and have questioned the strengthand nature of the relationship between self-concept and behavior (lglinsky,1968; Thomas, 1976). They have tended to use global rather than specificmeasures of self-concept. Thus, a major issue in self-concept studies con­cerns the use of global measures of self-concept in correlational studies ratherthan specified dimensions of the self-concept. Shavelson, Hubner, and Stan­ton (1976) suggested a hierarchical model of the self-concept with a generalself-concept at the top and progressive differentiation to more specific self­concepts toward the bottom of the hierarchy. They believed this approach wasthe best way to study the relationship between self-concept and other psycho­social variables.

Recent research studies using specific, rather than global self-conceptmeasures have reported strong correlations between negative self-concept andvarious forms of psychopathology. Studies of substance abuse among chil­dren in public schools, for example, have shown very strong correlations be­tween children's negative self-concept and their use of drugs (Bay, 1983; No­rern-Hebeisen, 1975). These researchers identified negative self-concept asone of the most significant psychosocial correlates of substance abuse. Wil­liams (1978) reported that, generally, students can be helped through improv­ing their self-concept and that this is particularly true of students who are atrisk of becoming addicted to drugs.

Strong correlations have also been established between self-concept andother forms of psychopathology. Coopersmith (1981) asked 82 mothers toindicate the extent to which their children experienced emotional problems.Of those children identified as having negative self-concepts, 60% were saidto demonstrate serious emotional problems by their mothers. Coopersmithasserted that persons who are relatively anxious and distressed are inclined tohave negative self-concepts that become reflected in psychosomatic symp­toms. He noted that children with negative self-concepts tend to be destruc­tive.

Another issue centers around the tendency to use ratings of chil­dren's behavior from a single source (usually parents or teachers) in mostcorrelational studies rather than from multiple sources. Notably absent in theliterature are correlational studies of the relationships between specific self-

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Comer, Haynes, Hamilton-Lee, Boger, & Rollock 323

concept dimensions and multiple assessments of children's behavior, in­cluding assessments from children themselves. A comparison of coefficientsbetween parents, teachers, and children's own assessments of children's be­havior and children's self-concept has not been done before.

The present study was undertaken to examine the nature of the relation­ship between specific self-concept dimensions and the ratings of children'ssocial competence by their parents, teachers, and themselves. The intent wasto determine whether the self-concept dimensions correlated differently witheach of the three sources of ratings of children's social competence and thento examine the relative predictive power of each self-concept dimension interms of children's social competence.

It is important to stress that the theoretical framework for the presentstudy was based on American culture, and the studies reported focused onAmerican children. Thus, any implications to be derived from the presentstudy may not be in any way generalizable to different cultures. Indeed, thesample in the present study were black American students attending inner­city schools and the implications of the results may not be generalizable be­yond such a population.

Method

Subjects

The study sample included 253 black, middle-school children in an inner-cityschool system in the Northeast, as well as their parents and teachers. Thestudents were randomly selected from among students in 14 schools in thedistrict.

Instruments

The instruments used were the Tennessee Self-Concept Scale (Fitts, 1965)and the Social Competence Scale, which was developed by the School De­velopment Program staff at the Yale Child Study Center (1985).

The Tennessee Self-Concept Scale contains 100 self-descriptive state­ments. Respondents are asked to indicate whether each statement is com­pletely false, mostly false, partly false or partly true, mostly true, or com­pletely true of them. The 100 items were factored to form a number ofsubscales, six of which were used in this study: behavior self, physical self,moral-ethical self, personal self, family self, and social self. These six sub­scales were chosen because they were viewed as being most appropriate for

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324 Journal ofSocial Psychology

the study, given the dependent variable (social competence). The scale hasreported test-retest reliability coefficients of .70 to .92.

The definitions of the six self-concept subscales according to Fitts (1965)are:

Behavior Self. This score comes from those items that say "This is what I do, orthis is the way I act." Thus, this score measures the individual's perception ofhis or her own behavior or the way he or she functions.Physical Self. Here the individuals present their views of their bodies, state ofhealth, physical appearance, skills, and sexuality.Moral-Ethical Self. This score describes the self from a moral-ethical frame ofreference-moral worth, relationship to God, feelings of being a "good" or"bad" person, and satisfaction with one's religion or lack of it.Personal Self. This score reflects the individual's sense of personal worth, feel­ing of adequacy as a person, and the evaluation of his or her personality apartfrom the body or the relationships to others.Family Self. This score reflects one's feelings of adequacy, worth, and value asa family member. It refers to the individual's perception of self in reference tohis or her closest and most immediate circle of associates.Social Self. This is another "self as perceived in relation to others" category butpertains to "others" in a more general way. It reflects the person's sense of ade­quacy and worth in social interactions with other people in general.

The Social Competence Scale contains 24 descriptive statements regard­ing a child's behavior. Children are rated on a 3-point scale: never (I), some­times (2), or usually (3), for each statement. The development of the instru­ment was based on the work of Achenbach and Edelbrock (1981, 1983).Reliability studies of this instrument are currently in progress.

Procedure

Children completed the Tennessee Self-Concept Scale and the Social Com­petence Scale during regular school hours at their respective schools. Ar­rangements were made with school principals and teachers to have childrenexcused from classes and to report in groups to a designated area to completethe questionnaire. Prior permission from parents was obtained. Each parentand teacher completed a slightly modified version of the Social CompetenceScale with reference to the individual child. The scale was modified only interms of language to reflect the child as being the referent and object of as­sessment. The Social Competence Scale was mailed to the parents, completedby them, and was returned directly to the Child Study Center. The SocialCompetence Scale completed by teachers was delivered to them at theirrespective schools and was collected from them at their schools by theresearchers.

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Comer. Haynes. Hamilton-Lee, Boger, & Rollock 325

Analysis 1

Results

The data, which were subjected to a bivariate correlational analysis usingPearson Product-Moment r, are summarized in Table 1. The results indicatedmoderately high and very significant correlation coefficients between chil­dren's self-concept dimensions and their assessments of their own behavior.Their personal self-concept showed the strongest correlations between theirratings and their own behavior (r = .48). Low but significant correlationswere observed between parents' ratings of their children's behavior and theself-concept dimensions except for the correlation with family self-concept,which was not significant. No significant correlations were found betweenteachers' ratings and self-concept dimensions.

Discussion

The importance of significant others in helping to shape children's self­concept has long been acknowledged (Cooley, 1902; Coopersmith, 1967;Purkey, 1970). It is believed that children internalize the messages that sig­nificant others reflect about them and they begin to perceive themselves ac­cording to the messages they receive. Psychologists have indicated that par­ents (Mussen, Conger, & Kagan, 1974; Tocco & Bridges, 1973) and teachers(Day & Parker, 1977) significantly influence developing children's self­concepts. Rosenberg and Simmons (1971), however, asserted that school andteachers figure less prominently in the self-esteem of black children.

The results of the present study reveal that children's own assessments oftheir social competence correlated much more highly and significantly withtheir self-concepts than did their parents' and teachers' assessments. Corre-

TABLE IBivariate Correlation Coefficients Between Ratings of Children's Social

Competence and Their Self-Concept

Self-concept Child Parent Teachers

Personal self .48** .12* -.02Moral-Ethical self .42** .14* .04Physical self .39** .14* .06Family self .42** .09 -.01Social self .45** .15* .02Behavior self .41** .15* .05

* p < .05. ** p < .01

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lations with parents' and teachers' ratings were very low, and the correlationswith teachers' ratings were insignificant. There are two possible explanationsfor the discrepancies between the results in this study and in others that sup­port the importance of parents' and teachers' influence on children's self­concept.

First, most of the studies reviewed here used global measures of self­concept rather than the specific self-concept dimensions used in the presentstudy. The use of global self-concept measures may have distorted the truenature of the relationship between self-concept and children's behavior. Whenspecific self-concept dimensions are used, the strength of the relationship be­tween children's self-concept and the ratings by others of these children'sbehavior appears to be weaker.

The second explanation may be found in the phenomenological concep­tion of the self-concept. It is the phenomenologists belief that individualsknow more about themselves and how they feel about themselves than anyoneelse (Combs & Snugg, 1959). The much higher correlations between self­concept and self-ratings in comparison to parent and teacher ratings wouldseem to support this position.

A major implication of the findings in this study is that studies of behav­ior and self-concept among children should use more, not less, self-reportmeasures of behavior. Another implication has to do with the use of self­concept enhancement to influence behavior changes. Because personal self­concept showed the strongest relationship to social competence assessmentamong children, self-concept enhancement should be targeted at enhancingchildren's perceptions of their own worth as individuals.

Analysis 2

Given the moderately high and very significant bivariate correlations amongall of the self-concept dimensions and children's ratings of their own behav­ior, a hierarchical stepwise multiple regression analysis with self-concept di­mensions as independent (predictor) variables and children's ratings of theirbehavior on the Social Competence Scale as the dependent (criterion) variablewas also performed.

The multiple regression procedure allowed the researchers to examinethe predictive power of each self-concept dimension when the influence ofthe other self-concept dimensions was taken into account. The bivariate cor­relational analysis did not permit this kind of examination.

Results

The results of the hierarchical stepwise multiple regression procedure are pre­sented in Table 2. The results revealed that the children's perceptions of their

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Comer, Haynes, Hamilton-Lee, Boger, & Rollock 327

TABLE 2Stepwise Hierarchical Multiple Regression of Self-Concept Dimensions on

Student Ratings of Their Social Competence

OverallVariable F-Ratio Sig Multiple R R2 R2 change F-Ratio Sig

Personal self 25.19 .004 .48 .23 25.97 .004Behavior self 29.19 .004 .51 .26 .03 29.00 .004Physical self 56.57 .004 .63 .40 .14 40.77 .000Familyself 6.95 .007 .64 .41 .01 34.79 .003Social self 5.62 .007 .65 .42 .01 30.47 .003Moral/Ethical 4.36 .014 .66 .44 .02 27.10 .010

personal selves were the single best predictor of their ratings of their ownsocial competence. In the second step, children's views of their behavingselves were identified as the next most powerful predictor: Its contribution tothe regression equation increased by R2 by 3%. Physical self-concept wasadded to the equation in the third step, increasing R2 by 14%, a substantialand significant increase. The fourth and fifth independent variables to be in­cluded in the equation were family self-concept and social self-concept,which contributed 1% each to the R2• The sixth variable to be entered wasmoral/ethical self-concept, which contributed 2% to the R2.

Discussion

The results of the stepwise regression procedure indicate that personal self­concept was the most powerful predictor of self-ratings by students, followedby behavior self-concept. Personal self-concept with all variables consideredaccounted for 23% of the variance in behavior ratings. This finding clearlyindicates the importance of children's view of their self-worth as importantindividuals, apart from their interactions with others.

Of all the other dimensions, physical self-concept, entered in Step 3,made the largest contribution to the R2, a contribution of 14%. This indicatesthat, when considered together with the other self-concept dimensions, chil­dren's perceptions of their physical selves (i.e., the way they look) was a verymeaningful part of their total self-concept as far as influencing their behavioris concerned.

All of the self-concept dimensions in combination accounted for a totalof 44% of the observed variance in behavior self-assessment, and this wassignificant at the .01 level. Clearly, self-concept is an important factor thatinfluences the behavior of children and, even more importantly, the manner

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in which they evaluate their social competence. Of particular significance wasthe finding that teachers' evaluations of children's social competence did notcorrelate significantly with children's self-concept. This result appears to beconsistent with the view expressed by Rosenberg and Simmons (1971), whoargued that school and teachers have very little influence on how black chil­dren perceive themselves. They stressed the importance of the social contextoutside of school as having the strongest impact on black children's self­esteem.

Based on the findings of the current study-for the sample of black chil­dren studied, personal self-concept was the most powerful predictor of socialcompetence-it is important to emphasize the need for direct enhancementof black children's feelings of self-worth. It may be that parents of blackchildren and the black community at large need to find innovative ways, bothat home and in the community, to enhance the self-concept of black children.

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