The Identification of Items in the California Test of Personality That Differentiate between Subjects of High and Low Socioeconomic Status at the Fifth- and Seventh-Grade Levels

Abstract

IN RECENT years there have been a number of studies which have investi gated certain status-linked variables that appear to have an important influ ence on the developmental processes and corresponding personality character istics of children who represent different socioeconomic strata within the com munity (2,3,4, 6). These studies have concentrated on the child-rearing prac tices which are typical for each of the status groups and have generally em ployed some variant of the questionnaire or interview technique to obtain data from parents that could then be subjected to analysis. The present study was designed to ferret out some of the specific problems of adjustment that are characteristically reported with greater frequency by children from one or the other status group and which consequently must be related to the different social climates which are operative for each group in the manner desc r ibed by previous studies.