Socioeconomic status of girls and boys relating to their psychological health

Abstract

Socioeconomic status is an important exogenous factor impacting the child’s psychology and well-being. Participants in this study included students from grades 8, 10, 11, and 12 from Qatar. To measure emotional and behavioral problems, the students completed self-report questionnaires on socioeconomic indicators, gender, age, and the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. Confirmatory factor analysis was performed, and the model was improved by removing poorly loaded items. ANOVA was performed using an improved version of the model. The highest means were for emotional problems. The adolescents were mostly normal across all domains of the emotional and behavioral problem dimensions. In the univariate analysis, socioeconomic status was inversely related to all emotional and behavioral problem domains. The higher socioeconomic status the lower the emotional and behavioral problems. Girls had higher levels of emotional and behavioral problems, specifically related to emotional domains. There were no interaction effects between gender and socioeconomic status. The main significant differences found between males and females on emotional problems. In addition, a mean difference between high and average socioeconomic status on emotional problems was found. Similarly, there was a significant difference found between high economic status and middle and low socioeconomic status for peer problems.