Relationship Between Self-esteem And Social Adaptation Of Left-behind Junior Middle School Students

Left-behind Children is been seen as a special group that can not be ignored. Since China’s economy has been developed quickly in recent years, the demand for labor is growing. That’s the reason that a large number of rural workers merge in cities every year. However, considering about family financial condition, difficulties of residence migration, limitation of children going to school these kinds of practical problems, these workers who work in cities have to leave children in native town, letting relatives help to take care of them. These children live in a left behind life in a long term, so that they have difference in mental development and social adaptation with peers. Left-behind Children in junior school stage are been called left behind junior high school students, who are experiencing restlessness, anxiety and conflict in inner heart because of puberty. At this time, if they lack of appropriate education and instruction, they are unlikely to adapt to society and hinder mental and body development. Therefore, it is necessary to pay attention to self-esteem and the status of the social adaptation. This study was designed to investigate the different situation in implicit self-esteem, explicit self-esteem and social adaptation between left behind junior high school students and ordinary junior school students, as well as to explore the relationship among those three aspects. Subjects were divided into ordinary junior school students and left behind junior high school students. Measuring instruments are explicit self-esteem scale, Implicit Association Test(IAT), and social adaptability scale.The results of the study show that:(1) The effect of implicit self-esteem exits both in left behind junior school students and ordinary junior school students. Explicit self-esteem of left behind junior school students was significantly lower than the ordinary junior school students. There are no significant differences on implicit self-esteem of left behind junior school students and ordinary junior school students.(2) The overall scores in social adaptation of left behind junior school students are significantly lower than ordinary junior school students. Thereinto, The sense of psychological superiority, psychic energy, interpersonal adaptation and mental elasticity these four dimensions of left behind junior school students are significantly lower than ordinary junior school students, while only in the aspect of Activity factor, the score of left behind junior school students is significantly higher than ordinary junior school students.(3) Explicit self-esteem and implicit self-esteem is independent of each other.(4) There is a significant correlation between explicit self-esteem and social adaptation of left behind junior school students. There are very significant differences in the total score of social adaptation and psychic energy of four different self-esteem groups. There is a very significant positive correlation between the separation of explicit self-esteem and implicit self-esteem and social adaptation.