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INTRODUCTION
Adolescents who distinguish themselves as leaders in high school reveal a combination of intellectual and social adjustment. Seeing students become leaders is usually the culmination of years of effort on the part of parents, teachers, and the student. The student's leadership activity could simultaneously be viewed as a measure of past success and a predictor of future success, but perhaps most importantly, a sign of psychological and social adjustment. Such adjustment has been extensively researched. Some of the variables considered important have included self-esteem, self-concept, locus of control, family structure and career aspirations.
One study by Leung, Salili, and Baber (1986) found an intercorrelation among Chinese adolescents' self-esteem, locus of control, intelligence, family environment and common adolescent problems. Anxiety over performance and improper social conduct were related to self-perceived problems such as low self-esteem, external locus of control, and family cohesion (degree of commitment, help and support family members give one another), organization (degree of importance given to clear organization and structure in planning family activities and responsibilities), and conflict (amount of openly expressed anger, aggression, and conflict among family members.
In another study concerned with social adjustment, Rosenberg, Schooler, and Schoenbach (1989) found that high self-esteem adolescents were more likely to perform well in school, not be depressed, and not be socially delinquent. Teasing out the cause and effect relationships between self-esteem and other variables, Rosenberg et al. concluded that (1) low self-esteem fosters delinquency and that particularly in lower socioeconomic groups delinquency fosters higher self-esteem, (2) self-esteem is largely attributable to the effect of school performance, (3) the relationship between self-esteem and depression seems to be bidirectional. The results of a study by De Man and DeVisse (1987) showed that alienation--withdrawal due to maladjustment to society--is related to low self-esteem and an external locus of control.
Holman and Woodroffe-Patrick (1988) found that children from single-parent homes were less happy than those from two-parent homes even when controlling for amount of conflict. Amato (1986) found a weak negative relationship between marital conflict and self-esteem in adolescents. The negative effects of conflict tended to be strongest when relationships with both parents were poor.
The aforementioned studies have focused primarily on determining which variables are related to alienation, delinquency, and other signs of maladjustment. However,...