Locus of Control and Self-Esteem in Relation to Home Environment

Abstract

The present study is an attempt to explore relationship between locus of control and self esteem of adolescents. Mutiphasic sampling method was used to select the sample. In the first phase 600 adolescents (300 boys and 300 girls) in the age range of 14–18 years belonging to nuclear families were selected and administered the self developed Home Environment Scale. After that the respondents were categorized into two groups i.e. the participants with favourable and unfavourable home environments on the basis of their mean and standard deviation on the said scale and they were the final research subjects for the study. In the last phase the final sample of 281 subjects (152 favourable home environments and 129 unfavourable home environment) were administered Locus of Control Scale and Self Esteem Inventory. The data were analyzed by calculating coefficients of correlations. The results of the study revealed that there is a significant negative relationship between locus of control and both the personally perceived and socially perceived self esteem of adolescents irrespective of type of home environments. A strong positive association between personally perceived and socially perceived self-esteem was found irrespective of home environment and sex. The findings are discussed in the light of earlier studies.