Personality Differences of Adolescents with Working Mothers

Research proposal on

A comparative study on personality of adolescents between working and non – working mother in Bangladesh

• Shinthia parvin

SUMMARY

The present study will conduct to investigate whether there will any difference in personality of adolescence between working or non-working mother in Bangladesh. For this purpose 100 students will take from different areas of Dhaka city where 50 students mother is housewife and 50 students mother is working women. Each of the group will match regarding their age, educational qualification and socio-economic status. The information will collect through two questionnaire (1) questionnaire for participants’ personal information and (2) Eysenck personality Questionnaire (EPQ). The age group of the participants was between 12 to 18 years. The statistical treatment of the data will do by t-test. The hypotheses of this research assumed that “ there are differences in personality of adolescence between working or non- working mother,”indicating there would be a difference among the four dimension of the personality like Extraversion (E) ,neuroticism (N) , Psychoticism (P) , and Lie scale (L) , in the two groups.

Introduction

Adolescence is the period of life from late childhood until physical growth is relatively complete and also marks the beginning of early adulthood. Age 13 through 16 is considered early adolescence and 17 through 21 is late adolescence (Wolman, 1989). The term adolescence is commonly used to describe the transitional stage of physical and psychological development between childhood and adulthood. There is no one scientific definition of adolescence or set age boundary. There is a key development change that nearly all adolescents experience during their transition from childhood to adulthood. This time frame, however, not only describes a very diverse reality, but adolescence varies considerably across cultures, over time, and within individuals (Kaplan, 2004).

Personality is dynamic which depends on organization within the individual of those psychophysical systems that determine his or her unique adjustment to his environment .personality is what a man really is (Allport,1975) .Personality can be defined as the unique pattern of behavioral and mental processes that characterize an individual and the individual’s interactions with the environment (Crider &others, 1993). Each man is individual to the dimensions of personality.

Because of this difference in personality some women wanted only to look after their family and some women wanted to engage in work outside of their home.

Veroff and fello (1970) mentioned that the aim of the women who have professional values are education and working life, whereas the aim of the family related house women are marriage and bringing up their children.

French and lesses (1964) have shown in their research that the ancient mentality based on women who Have definite goals demonstrate good skill when they play their role as a wife and as a mother.

Majority of Bangladeshi women play a role as a housewife more than a working women, but the women who are residing in the cities are beginning to establish their own profession. Huq (1981) has shown in a research that 55% of working women in the town are the principle earning person of the family, 20% work for filling up the shortage of each other’s income, 6% work to pass their time, 12% work for utilizing their education and 4% work for enjoying their freedom through their profession. Yet, most of the women are still housewives and the numbers of working women are less in number.

Bangladeshi society considers motherhood the most desirable role for the women. And family responsibilities are more important for women than careers (Khan &Amanullah ),1998 . Miller (1975) saw that a mother’s job creates a negative influence on their child.

Traditionally Bangladeshi women work within the family structure. The working women have to work both within the family and in their work place. So it creates more stress on them. It can also affect children‘s life. Islam &Rahman (1991) found that the housewife mothers make their children more dependent than working mothers and they become more protective of their female child than of their male child and encourages the male child to develop their language skill .on the other hand, a working mother makes their male child more dependent than their female child and greatly influence them to develop their language skill .The hypothesis of this research assumed that “there are differences in personality of adolescents between working and non-working mother”, indicating there would be a difference among four dimensions of the personality like Extraversion (E), Neuroticism (N), psychoticism (P), and Lie scale (L), in the two groups.

Aims

The aim of this research project is to

ï‚· Understand adolescent’s personality.

ï‚· Investigate there will any differences in personality of adolescents between working and non-working mother.

Justification/Rationale

Adolescence is a very critical and transitional period of life span of a person. In that time, adolescents have to cope with their physical, social, psychological changes; that is why they have to face a lot of stressful situation such as family, school and peer group pressure which effect their life. Sometimes, adolescents may fall down from their mainstream because of anger, life stress, and lack of consciousness which is threatening to their development. The findings of the study will be helpful to understand the status of personality of the adolescents. The study would have some applied values and the study would give new knowledge about personality and its related of other problems of adolescence period. Therefore, this study will help us to provide such information which is very essential for mental health workers, psychologists, sociologists, governments, NGOs and policy makers to take effective steps to facilitate adolescent development.

Method

Participants

50 working women’s child and 50 non-working women’s child will take as a sample of the present research. The samples will collect from different places of Dhaka city. The age range of the student will between 12 to 18 years. Their educational qualifications will from class vii to HSC level. The professions of the working mother will school teacher, college teacher, government service holder, doctor, nurse, and banker.

Instruments

Two types of questionnaire will use. First a demographic questionnaire will give to get the personal information of the participants like age, educational qualification, socioeconomic status, monthly family income, etc. The second questionnaire will Eyesenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ) Bengali version(translated standardized byRahman in 1980). EPQ contained one hundred and one items. Both questionnaires will give to the participants individually.

Procedure

The sample will collect from the different areas of Dhaka city. In this study two types of questionnaire will use, at first questionnaire will be given to collect participants personal information and EPQ is the self-directed questionnaire. Before responding the participants will assure that full confidentiality will be maintained. The participants will answer the questions by circling the ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer. For each positive item, score 1 indicates ‘yes’ and 0 for ‘no’. Reverse scoring will use for the negative items. The sums of the scores of all items will the total score of the scale for an individual.