An Investigation of Self-Concept in Adult College Students

The purpose of the researcher was to investigate the effects of a continuing education course designed to improve adults\u27 self-concepts. The independent variables investigated were gender, age, and implementation-no implementation. The dependent variables were the scores of the following ten subscale s from the Tennessee Self-Concept Scale: (1) Identity, (2) Satisfaction, (3) Behavior, (4) Physical Self, (5) Moral-Ethical Self, (6) Personal Self, (7) Family Self, (8) Social Self, (9) Self-Criticism, and (10) Total Self. A pretest and posttest two groups with an extra control group design was employed. Four hypotheses were tested at the .05 level of significance and all four hypotheses were rejected. A total of 40 preplanned and ten “post hoc” comparisons were made. Significant F values were found for subscales Behavior, Family Self, and Social Self indicating that the control group had significantly larger adjusted post-mean scores than the implementation group. “Post Hoc” tests for repeated measures were made for the participating group for each of the ten subscales. The post test mean scores were significantly larger at the .05 level than the corresponding pretest mean scores for the following subscales: Identity, Behavior, Moral-Ethical Self, Personal Self, Family Self, and Total Self. Significant F values were found for subscales Identity, Self-Criticism, and Moral-Ethical Self Indicating that male participants scored significantly higher than female participants. A significant F value was found for the subscale Behavior indicating that those participating who were 40-70 years of age had a larger adjusted post-mean than those who were 23-39 years of age. A comparison of post-mean scores only generated significant F values for subscales Identity, Satisfaction, Behavior, Physical Self, Moral-Ethical Self, Family Self, Social Self, and Total Self Indicating that for the eight subscales which had significant main effects, the participating group had the lowest post-mean scores. The results of this study appeared to support the following generalizations: that those who participated compared to a control group showed no improvement, pretest and post test comparisons Indicated that those who participated showed improvement for six of ten subscales, participating males showed a greater change in self-concept than participating females, and older participants had a greater change in self-concept pertaining to behavior than younger participants