The Relationship Between Self-esteem and Preference Type of Play by Gender of Elementary School Students

The purpose of this study is to differentiate the gender into males and females based on prior research that children prefer different types of play depending on their gender,and to see what the relationship between their self-esteem and preferred types of play is.Random stratified method was used to collect study participants for this study.Elementary school students in Incheon Metropolitan City,Republic of Korea,were set up as a population,the city was divided into six areas in a similar area,and each school was numbered after identifying local elementary schools.A total of six schools were selected for each region by making random checks.A total of 18 classes were selected for each of the four,five,and six grades.A total of 450 questionnaires were distributed,but 381 of them were used for statistical analysis,except for 69 that were judged to have been poorly response.There were 215 male,166 female,151 in fourth grade,109 in fifth grade,and 121 in sixth grade.There are two questionnaires used in this study.First,to measure self-esteem,Rosengerg’s 10-item Self Esteem Scale was used to assess self-esteem.The scale,which provides a convenient measure of global attitudes about the self,has five negatively worded items and five positively worded items.This scale is one of the most widely used measures of self-esteem and has displayed good reliability and validity.Cronbach’s a showed 0.859.Second,to find out the preference for play types,we used those produced by Choi and Lee based on four types of play suggested by Roger Caillois.The questionnaire consists of four sub-variables:competition(Agon),chance(Alea),simulation(Mimicry)and vertigo(Ilinx).The Crombach’s a values are 0.705,0.694,0.786,and 0.722,respectively.The class teacher of the selected school was contacted and explained the purpose of the study and asked for consent.On the measurement date,we visited the class and conducted the measurement.Before measurement,we informed the purpose of the study again and asked for consent.The self-reported method was used to respond,and the measurement time was about 10 minutes.The responses were coded using the SPSS(win)15.0 program and frequency analysis was performed to characterize the data.The independent t-test was carried out to see if there was a difference between self-esteem and preferred types of play by gender.Correlation analysis was performed to see how self-esteem relates to the type of preferred play.All statistical significance levels are set as p<0.05.Children’s self-esteem does not differ depending on their gender.And it turned out that boys preferred competition,and girls preferred simulation,and chance and vertigo did not differ depending on gender.In male,a correlation between self-esteem and preference for play types has resulted in statistically significant correlation between self-esteem and competition,chance,and vertigo.In female,a correlation between self-esteem and preference for play types was performed in vertigo,where self-esteem was statistically significant.