Starting in 2004, the Open2.net and BBC Parenting websites have been making available to the general public a series of online interactive studies linked to the themes of the BBC/OU television series Child of Our Time.

These have covered a range of aspects of human development, with summary analyses of the results also being displayed, updated as the datasets build.

Topics include self-concepts, what makes ‘a good parent’, children’s use of leisure time, ethnicity and friendship choice, optimism, locus of control and moral action choices. With numbers of completions as high as 40,000, these studies are proving to be a valuable source of large scale datasets on developmental issues.

Here we present some interim results from these studies, and illustrate the potential of this means of collecting data and encouraging public interest in child development.

Aims

Among the issues covered in the 2006 Child of Our Time series were self-esteem, optimism and locus of control.

These three extensively researched dimensions of personality are widely regarded as being central to the views individuals have about themselves and their worlds.

We were interested in relating these dimensions to other issues of current concern such as:

• weight, appearance and diet, and friendships
• social relations, particularly the use of submission, negotiation and aggression in challenging circumstances

Methods

A web-based survey was set up on Open2.net, linked to the BBC Parenting Child of Our Time website.

Two sets of questions were designed: one for 8- to 16-year-olds and another for adults.

The survey presented interactive versions of published questionnaires (in some cases modified in consultation with the authors) to make them accessible for the two age groups.

Participants
After removing data from participants who had given contradictory or patently invalid details the sample population was as shown:

number of participants =16,385
Mother 57.5%; Father 11.3%; Under 16 15.2%; Over 16 16.1%

Measures
Four well-established questionnaires were used:

Locus of Control (Rotter, 1966)
11 questions (adult) or 12 questions (child) on a 4 point response scale, high scores indicating an internal orientation, low scores an external orientation

Self Esteem (Rosenberg, 1986)
7 questions on a 4 point scale, adapted for the child group, higher scores indicating more positive self esteem.

Optimism (Scheier, Carver & Bridges, 1994)
10 questions on a 5 point scale, higher scores indicating greater optimism.

Moral Choices (Deluty, 1979)
a questionnaire about moral action choices concerning different reactions (submission, assertion/negotiation, or aggression) to difficult social circumstances

Weight and appearance, exercise and friendship
There were also individual questions concerning worries about weight and appearance, liking of exercise and numbers of friends.

Findings

Inter-relations among self esteem, locus of control and Life Orientation Test Results

The two dimensions of optimism and self-esteem were highly correlated - in other words a person who has high optimism is very likely to have high self-esteem. Both optimism and self-esteem had moderate correlations with locus of control.

All this indicates that people having an optimistic outlook are very likely to have positive self-esteem, and are also likely to see themselves as largely in control of their own lives.

What relations do Self-Esteem, Optimism and locus of control have with Moral Action Choices?

For children, having higher self esteem and being optimistic were each associated with less submission and more negotiation when they answered questions about difficult social situations.

Having an internal locus of control was associated with giving answers that involved more negotiation choices and fewer aggression choices.

There was a similar pattern for the adults except that locus of control was not as strongly related to reaction choices for difficult situations.

What relations do Self-Esteem, Optimism and Locus of Control have with numbers of friends?

For children, of all the measures, optimism had the strongest relationship with the number of friends. Children who were more optimistic reported having more friends

For adults, the picture was similar, but self-esteem was also quite strongly related to the reported number of friends.

For both adults and children, locus of control was only weakly associated with the reported number of friends.

What relations do Self-Esteem, Optimism and Locus of Control have with worries about weight/ appearance and liking exercise?

For children, high self-esteem and optimism were associated with fewer worries about weight and appearance, and greater liking for exercise.

A similar pattern was found for adults, except that the relations with exercise were weaker, perhaps reflecting a lower status for our own sports activities after we've left school.

Locus of control was not strongly related to any of these dimensions.

Only correlations of more than 0.2 are shown in the graphics

Summary

Self-esteem, optimism & locus of control are inter-related dimensions, these large sample results confirming previous findings with much smaller samples.

Self-esteem, optimism & locus of control are related to tendencies towards different courses of action in social relations, with a perceived external locus more likely to be associated with aggressive choices and an internal locus with more negotiation choices.

Higher self-esteem and optimism are associated with fewer worries about weight and appearance, but at least for children do not result in less liking for exercise.

References

Deluty, R.H. (1979) Children’s Action Tendency Scale: A self-report measure of aggressiveness, assertiveness, and submissiveness in children. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 47, pp. 1061-1071

Rosenberg, M. (1986) Conceiving the Self, Kreiger, Melbourne

Rotter, J.B. (1966) Generalized expectancies for internal versus external control of reinforcement, Psychological Monographs, 80, (1, Whole No. 609)

Scheier, M.F., Carver, C.S. and Bridges, M.W. (1994) Distinguishing optimism from neuroticism (and trait anxiety, self-mastery and self-esteem): A re-evaluation of the life orientation test, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67, pp. 1063-1078.