Research On Defense Styles Of Adolescents With Different Levels Of Self-esteem

This thesis intends to project a small picture of the defense styles of adolescents with different levels of self-esteem facing up with different life situations, as well as their registered permanent residence(urban or rural),school grade, gender, family (one-child or non-one child). The thesis adopted stratified sampling, the subjects involved in the study were 766 adolescents ranging from Grade 8 to Grade 11, and from university freshmen to junior students. The research included two methods: questionnaires and case study. Then the data were analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. The findings obtained from the analysis of the subjects are as follows:1. Adolescents' self-esteem level (with the exception of defensive high self-esteem) increases gradually with their ages; by comparison, their frequency of using immature defense level decreases, which means that the frequency of high school students and university students' using mature defense is significantly higher than junior middle school students.2. Adolescents' immature defense styles and mature defense styles, both indicate significant gender differences.3. Urban and rural adolescents indicate significant differences in general self-esteem level, high self-esteem level and defensive high self-esteem level.4. Only children and non-only-children indicate significant differences in low self-esteem level; only children and non-only-children indicate significant differences in immature defense styles and neutral defense styles.5. The number of only children with high self-esteem level is significantly bigger than that of non-only-children; the number of urban adolescents is significantly bigger than that of rural adolescents in defensive high self-esteem.6. Adolescents with low level of self-esteem tend to adopt immature defense styles; adolescents with high level of self-esteem tend to adopt mature defense styles, and they are face up and cope with difficulties more actively.7. Defensive high self-esteem adolescents tend to adopt immature defense styles; original high self-esteem adolescents tend to adopt mature defense styles, however, the two groups indicate no significant difference in neutral defense styles.This thesis tries to give some implication on adolescents' psychological counseling and mental health education by means of discussion on how to improve self-esteem level, it also broadened the range of subjects and added Defensive high self-esteem as one variable of the research. Thus, the new division of self-esteem was established, and the division was further adopted in the defense style related research, which helped to gain some implication to theoretical construction of self-esteem and practical use.The present research is only a tentative one. Before the thesis goes to the conclusion, some proposals are put forward so as to offer a modest spur to trigger, more valuable contributions in this field.