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Gender Roles Attitudes and their Correlations with Self-Esteem in High School Students: A cross-sectional study from West of Turkey

Author Affiliations

  • 1EskişehirOsmangazi University, Medical Faculty, Department of Public Health, Eskisehir, Turkey

Int. Res. J. Social Sci., Volume 5, Issue (11), Pages 8-16, November,14 (2016)

Abstract

Aims of this study are to evaluate attitudes on gender roles and possible effective factors to them, and to determine the correlations between gender altitudes and self-esteem among high school students. This study was cross-sectional and realized among eleven high schools in a city of West Turkey. The study group was 1688 (of target population 65.6%) students. A questionnaire form which consists of three parts was prepared. The first part of questionnaire form created with questions about socio-demographic, socioeconomic, family characteristics and social relationships. The second and third parts were included Gender Roles Attitude Scale (GRAS) and Coopersmith’s Self-esteem Scale (CSS), respectively. By GRAS, lower points indicate to “traditional attitude” while higher points are indicating to “egalitarian attitude”. By CSS, The scale’s scores ranged between 0 and 100. While these scores are increasing self-esteem also increases. Of body mass index 25 kg / m2 and over values were considered overweight / obese. For statistical analyses, SPSS (version 20.0) Statistical Pocket Program was used. Mann-Whitney U test, Kruskal-Wallis Analysis and Spearmann Correlation Analyses were applied. p<0.05 values were considered as statistical significance. Of the study group 861 (51.0%) were girls. The average age was 15.94±0.89 (min: 14, max: 18) years. To be man, rural living, extended family type, patriarchal life style, poor socioeconomic level, men role models, predominantly boyfriends were found that relating with traditional / patriarchal attitudes on gender roles (for each one; p<0.05). A positive but weak correlation was found between GRAS and CSS scores (rs: 0.133; p<0.001).This study has shown that there were many effective factors about traditional attitudes on gender roles. It may be useful to raise awareness to the egalitarian attitudes regarding gender roles in schools.

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