Self-esteem and locus of control of secondary school children both in England and Turkey.

This study investigates self-esteem and locus of control in a cross-cultural context, comparing British and Turkish students. Sex differences are also considered. The relationship between academic achievement and the personality variables of self-esteem and locus of control is also examined. The sample consisted of year-11 secondary school students. 190 were British and 315 were Turkish. In order to collect data, the Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory (SEI), the Nowicki-Strickland Internal-External Control Scale and the Crandall et al. Intellectual Achievement Responsibility Scale (IAR) were used. The findings of this study indicated that English subjects had higher self-esteem scores than the Turkish subjects. The results also showed that cultural differences were bigger among males than among females. The results reveal no sex differences when both the English and the Turkish samples were combined. However, among English subjects, the males had significantly higher self-esteem scores than their female counterparts, while no sex differences existed between Turkish males and females. Cross-cultural comparisons of global locus of control between English and Turkish cultures showed that there was no significant difference between English and Turkish subjects. Furthermore, the results also indicated that English males were significantly more internal than English females, whereas Turkish males and females did not differ. The data also indicated that English and Turkish students did not differ in academic locus of control. When the English and the Turkish males and females were compared, the results showed that there were no significant differences between English and Turkish females but English males were more internal than the Turkish males. Furthermore, the results also indicated that Turkish females were more internal than Turkish males, whereas, English males and females did not significantly differ. When the relationships between self-esteem and academic achievement were investigated, the data indicated that most of the self-esteem scales related significantly with academic achievement for the English and the Turkish samples. However the majority of the correlation coefficients were classified as moderate or low for the English sample as well as for the Turkish. The study also revealed that both the global and the academic locus of control scales were significantly correlated with the academic achievement (GPA) for both of the English and Turkish samples. Achievement also had a stronger relationship with global locus of control than the academic locus of control for both the English and the Turkish samples. In order to find out the best predictor of achievement, multiple regression analyses were carried out using the Stepwise procedure. Regression analyses, using academic achievement (GPA) scores as the criterion variable, found the Academic Self-Esteem variable as the best independent variable to predict achievement for both English and Turkish groups. However, together with the other independent variables, they accounted for only 19% of the variance in achievement for the English group and 13% of the variance for the Turkish group.