MEASURING AND EVALUATION OF ASSERTIVENESS, ANXIETY AND RETENTION LEVELS IN CHILDREN

Abstract

In this study, I measured and evaluated the levels of assertiveness, anxiety, and retention in children. For this purpose, I recruited a total of 135 healthy children (with parental consent) aged 8-9 years, both boys and girls, studying in the third grade of a primary school. I employed "the Assertiveness Inventory for Children”, “Revised Child Anxiety and Depression Scale-Child Version (RCADS-CV)", and "Benton Visual Retention Test (BVRT)" to measure and evaluate the data. I calculated frequency and percentage distributions for gender distribution, mean, standard deviation, minimum and maximum values for assertiveness, anxiety and retention levels as descriptive statistics during statistical evaluations of all data. On the other hand, as inferential statistics, Mann Whitney U-Test was performed for the differences between the means according to gender for assertiveness, anxiety and retention  tests, and Spearman Rank-Order Correlation Tests were performed for the relationship between assertiveness, anxiety and retention levels. Based on the evaluations, it was determined that the assertiveness, anxiety and retention  scores of the children were 31.45, 35.11, and 11.11, respectively. Similarly, the mean assertiveness, anxiety and retention  scores of boys and girls were 31.81 and 31.02, 34.03 and 36.53, 10.75 and 11.56, respectively, and there was no statistically significant difference between the mean scores of boys and girls (P>0.05, P>0.01). However, the anxiety scores of children decreased significantly (P<0.01) as their assertiveness scores increased. The findings revealed that there was no difference between the assertiveness, anxiety and retention levels of 8-9 years old children according to gender, but the level of assertiveness may affect the level of anxiety in boys and girls.

Key words: Children, assertiveness, anxiety and depression, retention