Relationship of Students' Attitude towards Science with Their Self- Concept: A Gender and Socioeconomic Status (SES) Based Study

Abstract

This study gauges the relationship of students' self-concept with respect to their attitude towards science. The randomly selected sample consisted of 1966, 10th grade science students. The science-related attitude was measured through an adapted version of TOSRA (r= 0.89). For Self-Concept, a questionnaire developed by Rana (2002) having r = 0.87 was used. For SES family income, parents' education and nature of job were considered. Pearson r along with descriptive statistics and t-tests was used for data analysis. Analysis revealed all respondents had a positive self concept and attitude towards science. Respondents' self-concept on the basis of gender as well as among three levels of SES was not significantly different. A moderate, positive and significant correlation was found between both variables. A similar pattern was seen in the case of male, female, low-level SES and medium-level SES respondents separately, but the relationship was weak though positive and significant for respondents of high-level SES.