A comparative study of social and emotional maturity of senior school adolescents of Pantnagar
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Date
2009-08
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G.B. Pant University of Agriculture and Technology, Pantnagar - 263145 (Uttarakhand)
Abstract
The term adolescence comes from the Latin verb adolescere, which simply means to grow to maturity. By the end of adolescence period, the adolescent is expected not only to be physically and cognitively mature but also be socially and emotionally mature, that is, he must be ready to face the world alone without his parents or teachers to act as buffers, as they did when he was a child. It is so, as emotional maturity and social maturity are vital for attaining success and happiness in adult life. The 21st century is an era of technological revolution. Due to changes in technology, the environment today is changing as never before. Adolescent today is exposed to vast, unlimited and uncensored information along with increased pressure due to high competitiveness, expectation from family and peers. In this dynamic environment, adolescents are finding it difficult to adjust themselves, and sometimes even getting succumbed to the environmental pressure. This is quite evident from the increase in number of criminal, suicidal, drug abuse and rape cases where adolescents are involved. In some extreme cases, adolescents are used by terrorist groups as a weapon of terror as it is very easy to influence them due to their low social and emotional maturity levels.
The present study was undertaken to assess if the senior school adolescents of Pantnagar have successfully attained the developmental milestones of adolescence especially social and emotional maturity and are ready to face this fast changing and demanding world efficiently, courageously and responsibly as an ideal citizen of the society. All the adolescents studying in class XI of Campus School, GGIC and PIC were selected for the present study making a total of two hundred & seventy seven (277) respondents. The self-designed socio-demographic questionnaire was used to study the socio-demographic characteristics of class XI students of the selected schools. Social maturity and emotional maturity of the students was assessed through Rao‟s Social Maturity Scale by Nalini Rao and Emotional Maturity Scale by Y. Singh and M. Bhargava, respectively. The present study revealed that girls were more socially adequate than boys whereas boys were more socially adjusting than girls. Adolescents having three or more siblings were also observed to be more personally adequate than those having one or no sibling. However, adolescents having one or no sibling were significantly higher on emotional progression and personality integration component of emotional maturity than those having two siblings. Another observation was that adolescents who were 1st born were significantly more socially mature, emotionally stable and socially adjusting than 2nd born. Adolescents whose fathers were educated upto intermediate or above were significantly more personally adequate than those whose were either illiterate or educated only upto matric but father‟s level of education did not influence the emotional maturity of adolescents. On the other hand, respondents whose mothers were PG or above were significantly more personally adequate than those whose mothers were illiterate or educated upto matric. They were also observed to be significantly higher on emotional progression than the rest. Respondents whose fathers and mothers were Class 1 or Class 2 employee were significantly more socially and emotionally mature than those whose were Class 3 and Class 4 employee. Adolescents of non-working mothers were also seen to be significantly more socially and emotionally mature than of Class 3 and Class 4 employee. Higher and upper middle class adolescents were seen to be significantly more personally adequate than those from rest of the classes but higher class adolescents were significantly low on social adequacy than others. Adolescents from higher class were also observed to be more socially adjusting and independent than those from lower class and on the whole more emotionally mature than those from rest of the classes. Respondents from joint family were more personally, interpersonally and socially adequate and thus, socially mature than those from nuclear family. Similarly they were significantly higher on emotional stability, emotional progression, social adjustment, personality integration and independence component of emotional maturity than those from nuclear family. Social maturity and emotional maturity was found to be significantly positively correlated across gender, number of siblings, birth order, family income, family type, parent‟s education and occupation.
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