Research On Sense Of Security Of Children Left Behind

According to All-China Women’s Federation, the number of children left behind (CLB) all over China has exceeded 60 million by the end of 2013. We defined the children left behind as follows:children aged from 1 to 17, one or both of whose parents have moved to city for at least half a year to work. They continue to live in rural areas, usually with their grandparents or other relatives. In order to match the psychological measurement, we selected the CLB aged from 9 years to 15 years as the subjects to answer the questionnaire.Despite deep concern to their education and psychological development, scholars have found that the mental health problems of CLB have become increasingly serious due to their unique experience of been left behind by their parents and that their psychological problems were closely related to special growing environment and education background. The psychological development problem of CLB lied in the fact that the long period of parent-child separation deprived them of continuous care and high quality parenting, which led to the fragileness in their sense of security. The sense of security of CLB was defined as "the assessment of confirmation, sense of competence and control when they forecast and assess the risks and stresses from outside, therefore a kind of individual inner evaluation about self, family, interpersonal communication, stress events, etc." As pointed out by Maslow, sense of security was mankind’s basic need and the premise of an individual’s psychological health and most important factor which could influence or determine one’s mental health. It even could be seen as a synonym for mental health. The development and property of sense of security had a profound and lasting influence on an individual’s life since it was an important condition for children’s personality development and socialization. Fields in which studies on the sense of security of CLB were been conducted, such as connotation, structure, feature, effect and mechanism etc., but it still need to be explored.A systematic study was started based on the clue from the phenomenon to mechanism and to application. Firstly, we analyzed the typical phenomenon of sense of security of CLB in study 1. Secondly, the scale of sense of security of CLB was made, and the construction and characteristic were explored in study 2. Thirdly, the mechanism of sense of security of CLB were explored from the noumenon, outer and inner point of views, which were utility in study 3, psycho-social factors in study 4, and social cognition characteristics in study 5. Lastly, the intervention studies were carried out in order to explore the methods of improving the sense of security of CLB. The six studies list above cared about the sense of security of CLB from different points of view, from outside to inside, from individual to general, from phenomenon to theory, and went to guide practice again, been put forward step by step.Quantitative research and qualitative research were combined to explore the sense of security of CLB from the perspectives of their daily experience and psychological development. The specific research process list as follows:(1) firstly, we reviewed the literatures and designed the research program, so as to conclude the disadvantages and trend of the researches. (2) 10 CLB in rural schools of Chongqing and Zhejiang were selected for the typical case interview. (3) 1,836 pupils at rural Chinese schools from Chongqing, Sichuan, Guizhou, Yunnan, Hubei, Henan, Jiangxi and Zhejiang were selected as subjects,100 of whom completed open surveys and semistructured interviews,289 of whom completed the preliminary survey, and 1,447 of whom completed the final survey. The construction and the norm of sense of security CLB were established. (4) 3,666 samples were collected through investigation in order to reveal the characteristics of sense of security of CLB. (5) The utility of sense of security between the life events, left-behind situation and the mental health were explored based on collected 2,219 samples. (6) The psycho-social factors of sense of security were revealed and the psycho-social model of sense of security were established (n=2219). (7) 67 CLB were selected as the subjects of social cognition experiment,32 of low scores of security scale were defined as "low level group of sense of security", and 35 of high scores of security scale were defined as "high level group of sense of security" which choose from 235 CLB in rural school of Zhejiang province, the experiment group and control group were established in the experimental study of social cognition of different level of sense of security. (8) The utility of group psychological counseling in improving the sense of security of CLB were explored through an intervention study in which 60 CLB from rural school of Zhejiang Province attended.The following nine conclusions have been arrived by means of multi-angle and multi-approach exploration:(1) Results of interviews with typical cases have confirmed the construction, characteristics, psycho-social model, and social cognition characteristics of security and insecurity of CLB and that the sense of security of CLB were affected by multi-factors.(2) The structure of sense of security of CLB was a model of multi-dimension which included five factors:Interpersonal confidence, Sense of safety and crisis, Control to stress, Self-acceptance and Fearless to strangers. All these factors corresponded to the life situation and characteristics of physical and mental development of CLB, as well as their self-evaluation and understanding of life.(3) An exploratory factor analysis resulted in a 5-factor solution, comprising 26 items that explained 56.08% of the variance. A confirmatory factor analysis replicated the initial factor structure, indicating satisfactory goodness-of-fit and internal consistency. The reliability and validity of the resulting Questionnaire of Sense of Security for Children Left Behind has considerable potential for use in the context of rural China for research about children who have been left behind. The result showed that there was a significant difference between children left behind and children non-left-behind in terms of the score of sense of security. The overall norm, gender norm and grade norm established based on the investigation of sense of security of CLB could be used as a measurement tool for research, education and clinical diagnosis purposes.(4) The distribution of the test of sense of security of CLB was in accordance with normal distribution. The scores of Interpersonal confidence, Sense of safety and crisis, Self-acceptance, Fearless to strangers and Control to stress list from high to low in turn. There were significant differences between different demographic variables. The scores of female were lower than male, and minorities lower than Hans, who were non-single-child lower than single-child, low grades lower than high grade, living in rural areas lower than living in cities and towns, living in poverty families were lower than that of living in families of better economic situation, living in special families lower than that of living in ordinary families, the scores of the poor school performance were lower than that of better school performance, whose both parents away from home were lower than that of whose only one parent away, whose parents received little education were lower than whose parents received more education, who lack parent-child communication were lower than who enjoyed more frequent parent-child communication, and who lived alone were lower than that of who lived with others, all the difference were in significant level. More care and support should be taken to CLB whose left behind situation was more serious.(5) The demographic variables which could highly predict the sense of security of CLB were gender and family economic status, followed by the other ones, i.e. grade, school performance, educational level of parents, parent-child communication frequency, nation, times of parents return home, types of left behind and single child or not; the variables of start age left behind and custodianship did not predict the sense of security.(6) CLB felt more stress from life events than non-left-behind children, with a significant difference of sense of security among different levels of life events stress, the greater the stress, the lower the sense of security was. The mental health of CLB was a major concern, which seemed significantly different among CLB with different levels of sense of security. Life events were negatively correlated with sense of security, while its correlation with mental health was positive. Sense of security played a significant role and a partially intermediary role in moderating life events and their mental health. The living situation of CLB was an important predictor to their mental health whereas their sense of security played a complete intermediary role between their left-behind situation and mental health. Their situation of been left behind affected the mental health of CLB by acting on the development of sense of security.(7) Sense of security of CLB were apparently correlated with perceived family support, perceived school atmosphere, social adaptation, perceived social support, and self-efficacy, which constituted the social-psychological factors model of sense of security. Different kinds of psycho-social situations of CLB led to the differences of sense of security, perceived social support and self-efficacy. Perceived social support played a significant moderate role between perceived school atmosphere, social adaption and sense of security, while self-efficacy between perceived atmosphere and sense of security. Perceived family function and school climate predicted sense of security directly, while social adaption and perceived school atmosphere were direct predictors of self-efficacy. Perceived social support functions played a complete intermediary role between perceived family support, perceived school climate and sense of security. Self-efficacy intermediates between perceived school atmosphere and sense of security, but only played a partially moderate role between social adaption and sense of security.(8) There were significant differences of social cognition characteristics in coping with different types of social life information between different levels of sense of security. CLB with low level of sense of security had a tendency in negative coding to social information and have a significantly higher right memory and recognition rate about negative items than those with high level of sense of security, as well as significant tendency of negative remember and recognition about social information.(9) The overall sense of security of CLB could be influenced and promoted by group counseling intervention which could help to promote their interpersonal confidence and change their perception of danger.This study combined quantitative research with qualitative research to establish and verify five-factor model of sense of security of CLB. Meanwhile, the psycho-social factor model of sense of security of CLB was discussed, the social cognitive processing of CLB with different levels of sense of security verified, and the group psychological counseling intervention of sense of security of CLB proposed. However, relative studies of cognitive neural mechanism and other psychology and behavior problems of sense of security of CLB need a further consideration in the future.