A Study of Security-Insecurity Feelings among Adolescents in Relation to Gender and Socio-Economic Status

Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate the significant differences in the security-insecurity scores of adolescent boys and girls belonging to high socio-economic status and low socio-economic status. There were three objectives of the present study (1) to study the main effect of “gender” on the security-insecurity feelings, (2) to study the impact of “socio-economic status” on securityinsecurity feelings, (3) to examine whether or not there is an interactional effect of “gender and socio-economic status” on the security and insecurity feelings, taken as criterion. To achieve these objectives a 2x2 factorial design in which each variable varying two ways was used in the present study. There were four groups (namely; male and female, high socio-economic status and loweconomic status) each consisted 100 subjects. Socio-Economic Status Scale developed by Aggarwal, Bhasin, Sharma, Chhabra, Aggarwal and Rajoura (2005) were administered on large sample of subjects to form two groups of subjects. Shah Security-Insecurity Scale (SISS) developed by Beena Shah (2010) was administered on these four groups of subjects. The data so obtained were tabulated group wise and analysed by analysis of variance. The result clearly demonstrated thatgirls showed more insecure feelings than boys; adolescents of low socio-economic status were more insecure than those of the high socio-economic status. The findings were discussed in the light of existing findings.