Personality and family correlates of problem behaviour among adolescents

Janovská (Anna)¹, Bacikova-Sleskova (Maria)^1
1Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice, Slovak Republic, Srobarova 2, 041 80, Kosice

 

Submission type

Poster only

Scheduled

Hallway, 22-07-2016, 16:00 - 17:00

Keywords

problem behaviour, adolescents, self-esteem, self-control , parenting

Summary

Recently, the rise of problem behaviour in schools has often been discussed. Indeed, adolescence is the period of life in which various forms of problem behaviour may escalate. In our contribution, we focused on the problem behaviour represented by avoiding school, disturbing the lesson, using vulgar words, cheating and refusing to meet  teacher’s demands. We examined their relationship with self-esteem, self-control and some aspects of parenting (child disclosure, parental solicitation, parental knowledge, parental monitoring). The research sample consisted of 1101 early adolescents (50.1% girls, Mean age=13.48) from primary schools in Slovakia. The respondents completed the Self-Control Scale, the Self-Esteem Scale, the Resilience and Youth Development scale, scales concerning parenting, and they were also asked about the frequency of problem behaviour. Problem behaviour of adolescents was found to be negatively associated with self-control (p<.001), child disclosure (p<.001), parental knowledge (p<.001), parental monitoring (p=.012) and positively associated with parental solicitation (p=.001). Our data support the existence of gender differences, i.e. boys reported problem behaviour more frequently than girls. The study has contributed to the understanding of correlates of problem behaviour in early adolescence and can be used for targeting prevention programmes.

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