Comparison of Homemaking and Non-Homemaking Pupils in Respect to Social Acceptance and Feelings of Security, with Emphasis on Guidance

: In the course of her teaching, the investigator has found that pupils’ confidence in themselves and ability to get along with other people, are often important factors in determining whether they succeed or fail in varying situations. Thus the investigator became interested in discovering to what extent the feeling of security is related to the way a person is accepted by his schoolmates. She was also interested in attempting to see whether or not, as a homemaking teacher, she could contribute to the improvement in social acceptance and feeling of security of her pupils. In addition, she hoped to analyze and diagnose the reasons for the low social acceptability of some pupils to help them make plans for positive adjustment. The specific objectives of the study were: To determine the relationship between the pupils’ social acceptance and their feeling of security; To determine if pupils enrolled in homemaking classes make a greater positive gain in social acceptance than do non-homemaking pupils; To determine if pupils enrolled in homemaking classes make a greater gain in feeling of security than do non-homemaking pupils; To determine the effect of personal counseling and guidance of a homemaking teacher (the investigator) as an aid to the pupils in increasing their feeling of security and improving their social acceptance by classmates. A battery of three tests were given to 161 high school pupils of Sutton, Nebraska at the first and last of the school term.These tests were (1) first four points of the Ohio Social Acceptance Scale; (2) Fun, Work, and Friends, a test for social acceptance made by Dr. Ruth Staples of the University of Nebraska; and (3) the first section of Maslow’s Security-Insecurity test. With intervening guidance given to a selected group of ten low-scoring homemaking girls, scores were tabulated and correlations run to determine relationships between social acceptance and security. Advisors: Kenneth L. Cannon and Florence Corbi