Adolescents' Social Adaptive Behaviors And Their Influencing Factors

Adaption and development are the basic contents of individual's life as well as the two most important projects confronted with by adolescents. Researching on the characteristics and rules of the adolescents' social adaptive behaviors has significant values both on theory and practice. This thesis attempts to construct an integrated model of adolescents' social adaptive behaviors, and to explore the developing standard, characteristics, inner elements and results, influencing factors and functions of the adolescents' social adaptive behaviors in China, and provides theoretical and empirical evidence not only for diagnosing and taking precautions against the adolescents' adaptive impediment, but for improving the adolescents' social adaptive standards and promoting the quality education.Using both the theoretical and empirical researching approaches, the present study testified the hypothesis of the integrated model of adolescents' social adaptive behavior. It first studied the structure, developing characteristics, measurement and the affecting factors of adolescents' social adaptive behavior. Then it explored further the characteristics of adolescents' personality and the development of their self-awareness. Besides, it investigated the relationship between these characteristics and social adaptive behavior.It is considered that social adaptive behavior is the one that individuals have to learn, choose and avoid in their life, study and communication in order to adapt to the outer environment, culture and to meet the demands of their own physical and mental development. Furthermore, it also reflects the individual's ability to manage daily life and take the social responsibility independently, and whether one has attained the ability in accordance with his age and the expectation of social culture. The essence of social adaptive behavior is the representation of social intelligence.Chapter 1 retrospected and summed up various theoretical models of social adaptive behavior, and presented the construct of researching into the adolescents' social adaptive behavior as well as the hypothesis of the integrated model of adolescents' social adaptive behavior. The integrated model consists of four sub-systems: task system (i.e., the structure), mechanism system (i.e., the affecting factors), mode system (i.e., the characteristics), and functional system (i.e., the functions), which depend on, condition and promote each other. The structure of the adolescents' adaptive behaviors can be categorized into well-adapted and ill-adapted types in terms of its nature, and inner adaptation and outer adaptation in terms of the source of the tasks, and top, middle, poor groups according to the adaptive standard. The operating systems and influencing factors of the adolescents' social adaptive behaviors mainly include social factors, personality factors, self-consciousness and intelligence system, which depend on each other but function independently. The characteristics of the adolescents' social adaptive behaviors are represented by the modes of social adaptation, which usually can be divided into active and passive adaptation, dependence and independence, rationality and emotionality, resilience and maladjustment. The function of the adolescents' social adaptive behaviors refers to its role in individual's growth and development.Chapter 2 explored students', parents' and teachers' views on adolescents' social adaptive behaviors in study 1. Interview, questionnaire and factor analysis found that adolescents' social adaptive behaviors concerns the two aspects of inner and outer adaptation tasks, that is, well adaptation of rewarding and maladjustment of punishment, which includes self orientation, social life, independence, study and cognition,social interaction, economic activities, and poor social, moral, study and emotion behaviors. This result provided further practical evidence for the research on the assignments and requirements of adolescents' social adaptive behaviors.In study 2, chapter 3 put forward the detailed structure of adolescents' social adaptive behaviors, constructed Adolescent's Social Adaptive Behaviors Questionnaire, consisting of two parts, normal adaptive behaviors and poor adaptive behaviors subscales, which contains 7 and 3 factors respectively. The result of EFA, CFA, inner consistency and test-retest index, content and construct validity analyses shows that, this measurement is reliable and valid. And it also confirmed the theoretical hypothesis of the structure of adolescent's social adaptive behaviors.Chapter 4 investigated the gender, age and grade differences of the social adaptive behaviors of middle school students from Junior 1 to Senior 3 in study 3 and study 4. The result shows that: 1) Junior high school students adapt better than Senior high school students; 2) Significant age and grade differences in normal social adaptive behaviors are found; 3) Significant age and grade differences are found in poor adaptive behaviors. With the increase of the age, poor adaptive behaviors tend to go up. On study adaptation, gender difference is significant, and student's adaptation decrease with the increase of the grade.Chapter 5 explored the relationship between adolescents' family and school environments and living experiences and social adaptive behaviors. Results of correlational analysis shows that resource of students, single child or not, parent's education and occupation, family income and education style correlated with adolescent's social adaptive behaviors substantially. In terms of school types, students in 3 kinds of schools have no difference in normal adaptive behaviors but significant difference in poor adaptive behaviors. Students in common middle schools are poorer than those in second-grade schools. And no difference is found among the other groups. Social experiences correlate with social adaptive behaviors significantly.Chapter 6 explore the characteristics of adolescents' personality development, and examined the relationship between adolescents' personality and social adaptation. The results shows that: 1) Personality of middle school students is not so optimistic; 2) Substantial gender, study period, and school types is found. Generally, personality correlated significantly with normal adaptive behaviors, but had little to do with the poor adaptive behaviors. Correlational analysis shows that social adaptation was influenced by personality in some degree, but cleverness had no correlation with the other factors except the moral behaviors.Chapter 7 constructed Adolescents' Self-awareness Questionnaire, and explored the relationship between adolescents' development of self-awareness and social adaptive behaviors. The result shows that the self-constructed questionnaire comprises five factors: self-esteem, self- confidence, self-consciousness, self-control, and consistency, and has adequate reliability and validity. Adolescents differentiates between study stages, and Junior high school students shows higher self-confidence, self-consciousness, self-control and self-management but lower self-esteem than Senior high school students. But there's little gender difference. Self awareness correlated with normal adaptive behaviors positively and poor adaptive behaviors negatively.In sum, results of the studies supported the researcher's theoretical hypotheses, and confirmed the integrated model hypothesis of adolescents' social adaptive behaviors primarily, and achieved the anticipative research goals.