Aggression and Self-esteem in Institutionalized Children

Abstract

This work: 1) categorizes the estructural and familiar causes, which take the children to institutions; 2) also analyzes the establishment children's agsressivity and self-steem; 3) hypothesis: the establishment children are more aggressive and less self-steem than the non-establishment ones.

The data were collected from a sample of 733 establishment children. A Cluster Analysis and a Factorial Analysis detect three factors: 1) familiar adversity and violence, clustering: familiar violence, familiar rupture, negative parental models, familiar adversity, social deprivation and mental disease; 2) delinquency, and 3) the lack of family.

Three questionnaires of aggressivity (emitted, received and inhibited) were applied and another of self-steem. The Factorial Analysis of these Scales presents 18 factors of aggressivity and 4 factors of self-steem. The comparison establishment children versus non-establishment in 22 factors verifies the hypothesis.