Relationship of Locus of Control to Age and Level of Aspiration

Abstract

Nowicki and Stridland (2) reported that personal control becomes more internal with increasing age. Lao (1) suggested that more internally oriented individuals tend to have higher expectations and aspirations, but there is little empirical evidence for this claim. Present research examined the relationship of locus of control to age and level of aspiration. The subjects were 30 Form 1 male pupils of a secondary school in Kano City, a commercial city in the Northern Nigeria. Subjects, wh'ose ages ranged between 12 and 17 yr., were from middle to upper class backgrounds and they were familiar with English as their second language. The Nowidi-Striddand I-E Scale (2) as a measure of locus of control and the Veness Level of Aspiration Scale (3) as a measure of level of aspiration were administered in English. The latter instrument required the subjects to play the popular game 'scrabble' with the words and to indicate what scores they hoped to achieve. The difference between subjects' actual scores and their hopedfor scores provided the basis for computing goal discrepancy scores which denoted levels of aspirations; a higher goal discrepancy (> 2.00) indicates an unrealistic level of aspiration. There were two independent variables, age and level of aspiration, and a dependent variable, locus of control. Analyses of variance were performed on the rhree measures, using a 2 (level of aspiration: high, M = 3.57 and low, M = 1.39) X 2 (age: young, M = 13.25 yr. and old. M = 16.23 yr.) design. This analysis yielded significant main effects for level of aspiration (F = 43.11, df = 1/26, p < .001) and age (F = 4.67, df = 1/26, p < .05). The interaction between level of aspiration and age was also significant (P = 13.02, df = 1/26, P < .01). These resulti' provide evidence that internality increases with age and internal children tend to have more realistic levels of aspiration than external ones.