A study of relationship between religiosity and self esteem among students in different secondary schools

This study?s purpose is to determine whether there is a relationship between religiosity and self esteem among students in different secondary schools and also what kind of relationship is present between these two variables and some other demographical variables.The subjects of this study are the following students within the borders of the Province of Izmir: 158 students from a high-school for natural sciences, 142 students from the ?İlkkursun High-School?, 130 students from a vocational high-school for Islamic professions, 88 students from the ?Karatas High-School?, 37 students from the ?Private Yamanlar High-School? which makes 555 middle school students in total. 263 of these subjects were girls and 282 were boys whereas 10 students did not mention their gender. The subjects? average age was 16.46 (ages were between 14 and 20).The following two scales were used in a combined method as data collecting instruments: The ?Religious Life Scale? which consists of 97 articles and which was developed by the academic personnel of Dokuz Eylül University, Faculty of Theology, Department of ?Psychology of Religion? as well as the ?Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale? which was translated into Turkish by Cuhadaroğlu.The obtained findings indicate that there is no significant correlation (r= -.00) between the variables ?religiosity? and ?self esteem? (p>.05). The same applies for the correlation between the variables ?religiosity? and ?gender? (r= -.05). However it is determined that there are significant correlations between the variables ?religiosity? and ?age? (r= .11) as well as ?school? (r= -.11) p<.009 and ?socio-economical level? (r= .09) p<.03.Additionally the variable ?self-esteem? points to significant correlations concerning the variables ?school? (r= -.16) and ?socio-economical level (r= -.17) p<.001 whereas it is found out that there are no significant relations between ?self-esteem? and ?age? or ?gender?.As a result, our hypothesis alleging a significant relationship between religiosity and self-esteem could not been supported. It was determined a fortiori that no such correlation exists between these two variables.Key Words: Secondary School, Adolescence, Religiousity, Self Esteem