Personal Identity and Socio-Emotional Issues Among Malaysian Gifted and Talented Students

Abstract

Personal identity serves as a foundation of character building that becomes a symbol of personality for a person or a nation. This study aims to identify the level of personal identity and its relationship with socio-emotional issues faced by gifted and talented students in Malaysia. One hundred and ninety four students from the secondary education program at PERMATApintar National Gifted Centre, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia were selected to respond to two research surveys, namely Students’ Personal Identity Instrument with 72 items, comprising six Personal Identity components, and Students’ Socio-emotional Issues Instrument with 60 items, comprising ten socio-emotional issues components. Students responded to the surveys using a 5-point Likert scale. Descriptive and inferential statistical analyses were used to determine the mean and correlation between variables (SPSS version 19.0). The results showed that gifted and talented students scored high on Personal identity (3.86, sd value of 6.41) and average on socio-emotional issues (2.71, sd: 7:39). Out of five components of self-identity, spiritual identity obtained the highest mean score (4.13), while leadership identity earned the lowest mean score (3.63). As for socio-emotional issues, social justice pressure obtained the highest score of 4.13 while family relationship pressure obtained the lowest score of 2.09. Pearson correlation analysis showed a significant negative correlation between personal identity and socio-emotional issues among gifted and talented students. The results of this study emphasize the importance of a self-development program for gifted and talented students as well as the crucial role of guidance and counselling services for students.