The investigation of hopelessness and submissive acts as psycho-social facts in pubescents living in poor families

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to determine socio-demographic characteristics of pubescents living in poor families and the relationships between these characteristics and hopelessness and submissive acts. The sample of the study consists of 280 pubescents, who are living in poor families and attending high schools placing in Adana city Yuregir district during fall semester of 2008. 164 students in the sample are female and 116 students are male. Data is collected from “Socio-demographic Level Scale”, “Beck Hopelessness Scale” and “Submissive Acts Scale”. For statistical analysis, t-test, one way variance analysis (ANOVA), correlation analysis and LSD test are used. At the end of the study, following results are determined: Girls have more submissive acts than boys and boys are more hopeless than girls; the pubescents not born in Adana have more submissive acts and hopelessness than the pubescents born in Adana; there is no significant relationship between submissive acts and age, but there is significant relationship between hopelessness level and age; the pubescents living in low-income families are more hopeless than others; the number of individuals in family is an effective variable only for hopelessness, thus the hopelessness increases with the number of individuals in family; there is no significant difference between the students’ submissive acts and between their hopelessness based on their families’ income levels and jobs; a significant but low relationship at .01 level is found between hopelessness and submissive acts.