Poster #205 - How am I Doing?: The Influence of Peers on Self-Competencies

• In Event: 3-053 - Poster Session 10
  In Poster Session: PS 10 Section - Social, Emotional, Personality

Integrative Statement

Rationale: Competence in domain-specific areas has been shown to predict general self-worth (Santo et al., 2013). Specifically, the study by Santo et al. (2013), focused on self-perceived social, cognitive, and physical competence as predictors of general self-worth. The goal of the present study is to investigate the additional influences on general self-worth, including peer-assessed competence in the specific areas of social, cognitive, and physical competence. The focus of current project however is to expand on the previous findings by delineating how early adolescents’ perceived competencies are associated with peer assessments in those areas through their associations with self-reported values using a large sample from Canada and Colombia

Method: Data were collected from 918 (48.0% boys) early adolescents (mean age = 10.78, S.D. = .95) from Montreal, Canada (n = 371) and Barranquilla, Colombia (n = 547). We used same-sex peer nominations (Masten, Morison, & Pellegrini, 1985) of sociability (“Someone who is liked by lots of people in the class”, α(2 items) = .87), cognitive ability (“Someone who is smart and does well in school”, α(2 items) = .90), and physical ability (“Someone who is a good athlete”, α(2 items) = .92). In addition, we assessed self-reported sociability (“I am liked by lots of people in my class”, α(2 items) = .56), cognitive ability (“I am smart and do well in school”, α(2 items) = .54), and physical ability (“I am a good athlete”, α(2 items) = .75) using a four-point Likert scale. We also measured social, cognitive, and physical competence in addition to general self-worth using the Harter (1982) perceived competence scale. Analyses were conducted using structural equation modeling of the associations between the study variables with general self-worth and the indirect associations between peer assessments of ability and respective competencies as a function of the self-report measures.

Results: Figure 1 depicts the associations in the final model, which was a good fit to the data (χ2(112) = 404.74, p < .05, CFI = .90, RMSEA = .05, SRMR = .06). A number of indirect effects were observed supporting the hypotheses that the association between peer-assessments of sociability, cognitive, and physical ability on early adolescents' social, cognitive, and physical competence are through the respective self-reported scores. Interestingly, above and beyond the direct effects, social competence was correlated with self-report physical ability whereas physical competence was correlated with self-report sociability (see figure 1). We also performed multi-group comparisons testing for differences as a function of gender and place of testing.

Discussion: The hypotheses were supported in that early adolescents' social, cognitive, and physical competencies were associated with both self- and peer-assessments. All competencies showed mediated effects of peer-assessments through self-assessments, and cognitive abilities showed an additional direct effect. Differences between the Montreal and Barranquilla samples and across genders are also discussed. These findings suggest that early adolescents' perceived competencies may be shaped by their interpretation of the information they receive from their peers which subsequently impacts general self-worth.

Authors

• C. Nathalie Yuen, University of Nebraska at Omaha
  Presenting Author

• Shari B. Mayman, Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario
  Non-Presenting Author

• Luz Stella-Lopez, Universidad Autónoma del Caribe
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jonathan Santo, University of Nebraska Omaha
  Non-Presenting Author

• William M. Bukowski, Concordia University
  Non-Presenting Author