A Comparative Study On Self-Esteem Of Middle-School Students Between Xi'an And Macao

Self-esteem is the competence that people owe to deal with the challenges of life in a worthy way perpetually. The level of one's self-esteem is closely related with his thinking style and coping style, and it will play a very important role in individual's development, mental health and social advancement. Researchers have made an agreement that a person without healthy self-esteem can't realize himself or herself, and self-esteem will deeply promote human's progress. Adolescence is an important period for the development of one's self-esteem, and self-esteem is considered as the parameter of adolescents' healthy development. So study on self-esteem of adolescents is meaningful both in the theory and the practice.The purpose of the present study is to investigate weather social culture has significant influence upon adolescents' self-esteem. To get it a survey approach was used to collect data of middle-school students' explicit self-esteem from Xi'an and Macao, and also an experiment method was used to collect data of middle-school students' implicit self-esteem from Xi'an and Macao. According to the aim, two studies were designed.In study 1,1299 students from six grades of four middle-schools of Xi'an and 1195 students from six grades of five middle-schools of Macao finished Self-Esteem Rating Scale for Adolescence. Gender and grade difference were analyzed both in Xi'an and Macao, so were the factors which influenced the development of explicit self-esteem. Then a comparion of these aspects of explicit self-esteem was made between the two cities.In study 2, 126 middle-school students from six grades of Xi'an and 253 middle-school students from six grades of Macao finished the Implicit Association Test and the Self-Esteem Rating Scale for Adolescence. The correlation of explicit self-esteem and implicit self-esteem was investigated firstly. Secondly Gender, grade difference and influential factors of students' implicit self-esteem of the cities were analyzed. Finally these aspects of implicit self-esteem between Xi'an and Macao were made a comparion.