Parental Education Level Positively Affects Self-Esteem of Turkish Adolescents

Abstract

*This article is dedicated to the first author’s sister, İfdadiye ŞAHİN, who died as a result of an infectious disease on 28.07.2013, at age 31. The research reported here derives from data, in part, from Ertuğrul ŞAHİN’s Master’s dissertation, conducted under the supervision of Yaşar BARUT. All authors equally contributed to preparation of this article. Although the literature on self-esteem has a long and prolific history in Turkey regarding which demographics may influence the self-esteem of adolescents. The research findings are intricate and undermine the need of further research in Turkey. This cross-sectional study re-examined the effects of age, grade level and education level of a mother and father, on the self-esteem of Turkish adolescents, in a substantially large sample. Participants were 2,213 adolescents (1085 boys, 1128 girls). Mean age of participants in this study was 12.76 (SD = 0.96). Participants were 6th, 7th, 8th grade students and recruited from 21 states and one private coeducational secondary school in Amasya. Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (Rosenberg, 1965) and Demographic İnformation are used as data collection instruments. One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) statistical test employed to test statistical hypotheses. Results suggested that there were no significant differences in self-esteem scores according to age and grade level. However, there were significant differences in self-esteem scores