Abstracts
3,344 Children aged between 10 to 16 years from grade 4 to 10 were recruited to explore potential explanatory variables of low self-esteem among rural school-aged children in China. The results showed that the RSE scores were slightly higher for girls than for boys and higher academic achievement didn’t contribute higher RSE scores in rural China. A lower height Z-scores resulted in a lower self-esteem in girls, and low SE was associated with height Z-score less than -1 versus scores more than -1 (OR=1.69, 95% CI 1.19-2.38, P=0.003). The findings indicated that it was height and BMI rather than weight to girls and weight to boys that were significantly associated with low self-esteem in rural China under the premise of very low rate of obesity.
DISCUSSION
We examined the association between self-esteem and economic status, academic achievement, height, weight and BMI in rural school-aged children in China. In this study, we found that the RSE scores of girls were slightly higher than that of boys in rural China. Low socioeconomic status had been reported to be a risk factor of low self-esteem, but our findings suggested that only the self-esteem scores of boys were associated with SES, and there was no significant difference for prevalence rate of dissatisfactory self-esteem among different economic status in boys. In addition, the self-esteem was not associated with SES in girls. The reason for this result may lie in the fact that there’s only a marginal difference among economic status especially in rural China.
Although prior studies had demonstrated that only a modest correlation was discovered between general self-esteem and academic achievement, despite popular beliefs that high self-esteem facilitates academic achievement (Marsh & Yeung, 2001), we found a unpredictable result that higher academic achievement didn’t contribute higher RSE scores in rural China. The cause may be include: 1) The high cost of Higher Education to poor people in China. 2) Nowadays, college students’ low employment becomes an undisputable reality in China. 3) Going to college didn’t necessarily bring about a dramatic transformation in the quality of life for poor people in China. These notions may change the learning attitude and motivation of children in rural China, and a good school perfermance is not still an important learning target for them. Moreover, this result was supported by previous studies. For example， Crocker and Major found that stigmatized groups may compare their outcomes with those of the in-group, rather than with the relatively advantaged out-group(Crocker & Major, 1989), and an other study found that children with low self-esteem seem to focus on self-protection; rather than trying to achieve gains for their self-esteem, they try to avoid losses(Wood, Giordano-Beech, Taylor, Michela, & Gaus, 1994).
A number of previous studies had explored the relationship between body image (height, weight, BMI) and self-esteem in adolescent (Al-Halabi et al., 2012; Latner, Knight, & Illingworth, 2011) and had produced conflicting results (Armitage, 2012; Russell, 2001). Previous studies had found that taller adults tend to enjoy better mental health than their counter parts of average (Armitage, 2012; Russell, 2001). Our results showed a lower self-esteem score and a higher prevalence rate of dissatisfactory self-esteem in girls with lower height Z-score, but there was no significant difference of self-esteem scores among different height Z-scores in boys. This results may be explained as follows: 1) Body image may be affected and partly determined by cultural beliefs and values regarding beauty and attractiveness. 2) Girls who express greater dissatisfaction with their height and body shape tend to have lower self-esteem scores than girls who have a healthier body image (Cooper & Fairburn, 1983; Furnham & Calnan, 1998). 3) The greater body dissatisfaction (discrepancy between current and ideal figures) displayed by adult females has since been replicated in adolescents. 4) Body shape satisfaction and self-esteem mbe significantly and more strongly related in females than males. Previous study about height and adolescent psychological well-being found that one percentile point increase in height is associated with only a 0.006–0.007 increase in RSE scores among American male students aged 12 to19 years(McClure, Tanski, Kingsbury, Gerrard, & Sargent, 2010), and this result was consistent with ours. In addition, a large amount of previous studies has demonstrated that overweight or obesity was a risk factor of low self-esteem (Franklin, Denyer, Steinbeck, Caterson, & Hill, 2006; Niclasen, 2005), but we found the factors of weight and BMI were not significantly associated with self-esteem in our findings. The reason might be derived from the difference of the investigated population. In our study, only 2.78% (93/3344) of participants were obesity (BMI Z-scores≥2), and the prevalence rate of obesity was much lower than that in urban China or developed countries.
It was easy to understand that the years of age when self-esteem was influenced by the height, weight and BMI was was earlier for girls than boys because of early puberty in girls than boys.
Further elucidation of the mechanisms through which characteristics related self-esteem will be necessary to guide families, clinicians, and public health workers in their efforts to preserve healthy self-esteem levels during adolescence and ensure a successful transition to adulthood, especially in China.