Table Of ContentAN INVESTIGATION OF 5ECUHITI, INSBGUBITI,
ACHIEVEMENT, AND MBXM IN EUSMENTAiOf
SCBOGD CHIIMN
•*r oN
Earl W.'kookar
A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy,
in the Department of Psychology in the Graduate
College of the State University of Iowa
February 1951
ProQuest Number: 10598617
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The writer wishes to express sincere appreciation to fir.
Halph K, Gjemann and to fir. Harold P. Bechtoldt for their guidance
r
and helpful suggestions in the organising and carrying out of the
study. He also wishes to thank the superintendent of schools, the
sixth grade teachers and children of the Tipton school] the principal,
sixth grad® teacher and children of the University Elementary School;
and the principal, the fifth grade and sixth grade teachers, and
children of the Campus Elementary School at the Iowa State Teachers
College, for their kind cooperation. Finally, appreciation is extended
to the judges who aided in the selection and sealing of the items
and to the writer's wife who aided in gathering the data and offered
many helpful suggestions in the preparation of the manuscript.
ii
OF CQMOTS
fkBU
Chapter page
I Background for the Study * • • • • « • * « • # » • • 1
Current Emphasis upon Adjustment in the
School Situation • • • * • « • * * • • • • • • « 1
Problem* Associated with Studies of
Adjustment * • « ........... 4
Procedures to be Used in Defining and
Identifying Adjustment States . . . . . . . . . 13
Statement of the Problem • • • * . • • • ....... IS
11 Summary of Preliminary Investigation . * * • . . . • SI
Introduction 21
Procedure • 21
Besults and Discussion • 25
111 Main Investig&tion.--Procedure and Results * . . • . 29
Introduction • • • • • • ............ . • . • 29
Procedure • » . » • • . • • • • • • 32
Results and Discussion « • • • • • • • • • • • • * 46
IV Summary and Conclusions • • • • • • • • • • • • * • 77
Appendix A . • • * ....... . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
Appendix B • ....... • • • 124
Appendix C.. 143
Appendix $ • • • • • • • • • • * * • .......... 155
Bibliography » • « • • • # • • » • • * • • • • « » • 161
iii
TAB TABms
m Of
Table page
I Estimates of Five Interval Boundary Points on
the Achievement-Boredom Continue and the
Corresponding Means and Standard Deviations • • * • SO
II Estimates of Five Interval Boundary Points on
the Security-Xnsecurity Continuum and the
Corresponding Means and Standard Deviation* • • • • 51
III Table of Eating-Aerating and Between-tfbserver
Correlations for the Four Samples • • • • • • • • • 5 8
IF The Means and Variances of AH Eatings In All
Samples • • • • • • • « • • • • ••• 61
V Product-"Moment Correlations Between Security and
Insecurity Frequency Scores and Between
Achievement and Boredom Frequency Scores# • • • • • 70
VI Correlation* Between Aahievemsnt-Boredom Scale
Score* and Security-Insecurity Scale Scores
in the Four Samples • • » • • • • • • • • « • • • • ? £
iv
1
Chapter I
BACH0ROTJHL' FOB WE SOT1IS
Current Emphasis upon Adjustment
in the school situation
In the literature concerned with the elementary
sehool child there has appeared in the past few years an
Increasing emphasis upon relations involving the complex
concept of the child’s adjustment (personality) in the
school situation, the concept appears, for example, in
discussions of the content and methods of instruction as
well as in disouealons of the effects of home and school
environments upon a child’s behavior. The complexity of
the concept as well as its importance is implicit in the
discussions prepared by such writers as Courtney (1, pp.
86-87), Hildreth (1, pp. 90-92), Averill (3), Frank and
Frank (10), and Wright (36), Various state conditions, ex
pressed as components of adjustment is these discussions,
are introdueed as accounting for the differential behavior
of children in a given situation. Cronbaeh (S), for exam
ple, suggests that a given set of motivating conditions
will lead to different responses in children heterogeneous
with respcet either to their antecedent experiences or to
2
their response character!sties*
The treatments of met writers on this topic of
adjustment* however, are not always in tom® of eomeepta
which are operationally defined* McCarthy, for example*
sets forth the hypothesis that 11 . * * emotional insecur
ity, usually stemming from unwholesome parental attitudes
of rejection and ©ver-pp©teefcl©n, 1® the basic cause of moat
educational disabilities and learning failure which are not
due to mental defect#11 (1, p. 93) In a similar rein, Baths
and Metcalf {&$) and lithall (34) postulate various needs
and ttstates,w and Symoitd* {SO) speahs of feelings of secur
ity, of achievement, and of boreddm as being associated
with the child1s level of performance and as developing
from parental attitudes and treatments* A feeling of se
curity is said to arise from ample affection at home. Such
conditions as irresponsible home environments are consider
ed as resulting in feelings of Insecurity# A feeling of a-
chieveraent is stated as leading to performances more nearly
in accordance with the child1® ability level# Bored child
ren, so it is claimed, not only fall to perform at the
level they should, but also engage actively in attention-
getting behaviors#
Several attempts have been made to teat auoh hy
potheses as those noted above concerning the relationship
3
between "adjustment,11 defined in various ways (i.e., as a
set of responsea) as one variable and either given anteced*
eat events or additional response variables as the other*
There seems to be some Indication that the Investigation
of hypotheses in this area would be very fruitful if satis
factory definitions for such "needs," "traits,0 or "adjust
ment variables1* could be devised* For example, Grace (12}
investigated the interaction between adjustment, defined as
a composite of several personality characteristics, and de
grees of verbal approval in the learning task among sixth
grade students* She reported that negative (failure) state
ments tended to be more effective with poorly adjusted
students while the positive (praise) statements were more
effective with the well adjusted children* Taylor and Far-
her (32) investigated the effect of failure and success ex
periences la very young children ©a form board performance
as a function of ascendancy and submission levels* They
found that the performance of the suhmla$lv©-fallure group
was slightly inferior and more variable than that of the
ascendant-fallure group. Taylor investigated the relation
ship between rate of eyelid conditioning and manifest anxi
ety (on a self-rating Inventory) in young college students
and found "that the anxious group was consistently superior
4
in amount of conditioning throughout tho oourao of condi
tioning trials . . (SI, p. 39)
Problems Associated with
studlea of Adjustment
*ttfiWawHMHiba«Wa*ndMMwMriMWlb*taMWoei
There ore, however, few available studios which
show consistent positive results in experimentally controlled
situations. Two related explanations nay he advanced to ac
count for this general lack of experimental evidence. She
first is that the studies are oriented toward bread hut
vaguely defined concepts of adjustment, as school and heme
adjustment or personal adjustment as opposed to social ad
justment. the second possibility is that the various inves
tigators in the field of adjustment tend to use the same
name for concepts identified by a variety of different oper
ational definitions. In offcot, both points reflect the ab
sence of agreement among different investigators as to the
trait definitions to be used.
The choice of, say, one of these alternative defi
nitions from among the many can hardly be made at the moment
on the basis of the number or of the magnitude of the empir
ical relations. The reason is that much of the data arises
from informal observation and from poorly controlled studies
5
shoving inconsistent conclusions* Sto equivocal results
may atom either from the lack of intrinsic relations or from
the inclusion of extraneous, but relevant, variables in the
definition of the concept or in designing the experimental
situation* fhe experimental variables can be systematically
studied and the effects upon the dependent variable noted*
If that dependent variable, however, is a composite of sev
eral separable components only a few of which are pertinent
to the hypothesis under study, the inclusion of the extran
eous components would tend to attenuate the relations under
study* In other words, on© working hypothesis as to the way
to obtain more consistent relations Involving adjustment
constructs is, first, to restrict the area under investiga
tion and, second, to define the concept by procedures which
restrict the extraneous sources of variance*
In this study the concept of school adjustment is
considered as entirely too broad to be meaningful at our
present state of knowledge* There are, however, four
"traits* which have been widely accepted as essential as
pects of school adjustment. These are: security, insecur
ity, achievement, and boredom, i.e., Wlthall (34)• The four
are frequently expressed as the two bi-polar traits of
security-tiisecurlty and aohievement-boredom but often
