The majority of studies gave no particular comment on, overall, whether the groups showed high or low self-esteem, and no standardised cut off points were set by Rosenberg (1965). However one can assume that the healthy controls provide a norm, and if the disease groups do not differ significantly from these (as the majority did not) they could be considered to have average self-esteem. This does assume that the healthy group was a representative sample, however, and in many studies these population came from a single school, so this may not be the case. The one study that found a lower average self-esteem in the adolescents with diabetes (Seigel et al., 1990) did report that across all disease groups 79% of participants were classified as having low esteem, compared to only 19% of healthy controls. None of the studies reviewed specifically recruited participants who suffered with depression, and thus no comparisons of those with clinically significant depression and those without were made. Instead, self-esteem means were averaged across groups and these Means formed the basis of the comparison. The implications of this will be discussed further in the Discussion section of this review.
The majority of studies gave no particular comment on, overall, whether the groups showed high or low self-esteem, and no standardised cut off points were set by Rosenberg (1965). However one can assume that the healthy controls provide a norm, and if the disease groups do not differ significantly from these (as the majority did not) they could be considered to have average self-esteem. This does assume that the healthy group was a representative sample, however, and in many studies these population came from a single school, so this may not be the case. The one study that found a lower average self-esteem in the adolescents with diabetes (Seigel et al., 1990) did report that across all disease groups 79% of participants were classified as having low esteem, compared to only 19% of healthy controls. None of the studies reviewed specifically recruited participants who suffered with depression, and thus no comparisons of those with clinically significant depression and those without were made. Instead, self-esteem means were averaged across groups and these Means formed the basis of the comparison. The implications of this will be discussed further in the Discussion section of this review.
E-thesis-%20final.docx