Level of self-concepts in educated unemployed young men in India: An empirical analysis

Abstract

Four hundred educated young men, equally divided into: (1) technically educated unemployed, (2) non-technically educated unemployed, (3) technically educated employed, and (4) non-technically educated employed, were administered a modified version of the 28-item Semantic Differential Scale of Self-Evaluation (Singh, 1990a). This was done in order to have a comparative account of the level of private and social self-concepts including social conflict (Index of Social Conflict = Discrepancy between Mean Scores of Private and Social Self-concepts) in them. The non-technically educated unemployed, followed by technically educated ones, had considerably less positive, though moderate, level of private and social self-concepts in them as compared to their employed counterparts. Further, the non-technically employed ones, experienced less social conflict than all other groups. In addition, the results showed that the unemployed, in general, as compared to the employed, rated themselves relatively low, though moderate, on nearly all the attributes measuring private and social self-concepts. However, some of the attributes used in both measures had higher scores in the unemployed groups.