Junior High School Students Have A Mediating Effect Between Academic Achievement And Self-concept

Junior school stage is the key period of self-concept development in an individual life. The formation of the self-concept is affected by many factors, such as parenting style, academic achievement, social status, social comparison and so on. Among these factors, social comparison which affect the shaping of individual self-concept to a great extent is a very common psychological phenomenon. At the same time, the academic achievement is also an important factor of the formation of self-concept for the junior school students'daily life is dominated by school work. Thus, based on domestic and foreign literature, this study took junior school students as the research object and developed the social comparison questionnaire. Then 300 junior school students were surveyed via questionnaire to explore development features of social comparison. Through correlation analysis, regression analysis and mediation effect testing, this study explored the relationship among academic achievement, social comparison and self-concert.The main results are as follows:(1) The social comparison questionnaire included of total five dimensions:upward comparison, downward comparison, parallel comparison, same effect and contrast effect, a total of 15 questions. The questionnaire retest reliability coefficient was 0.779 and the a coefficient was 0.691. The correlation coefficient between each dimension and the total score was in the range of 0.417 to 0.668.(2) The average score of each question of total social upward comparison, same effect, and general self-concept were higher than the median (the median is 3) while the downward comparison and contrast effect were lower than the median. The downward comparison had significant differences in gender. Second year students conducted more downward comparison. The upward comparison, downward comparison, parallel comparison, same effect, academic self-concept and general self-concept had significant differences in different academic achievement.(3) There was significant positive correlation between academic achievement, social comparison and self-concept. And social comparison partly mediated the relationship between academic achievement and self-concept, which was achieved by upward and downward comparison.The main conclusions are as follows:(1) The social comparison questionnaire included of total five dimensions:upward comparison, downward comparison, parallel comparison, same effect and contrast effect.(2) The junior school students tended to carry out more upward comparison with same effects. Boys tended to carry out more downward comparison. There were different social comparison manners and self-concept level between different academic achievement.(3) The self-concept of junior school students was affected by academic achievement and social comparison. The self-concept was not only directly affected by academic achievement, also indirectly affected by social comparison.