Abstract
The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of an intervention program in furthering self-esteem in preschoolers and to explore the relationship between self-esteem and creativity.Seventy-one preschoolers (38 males and 33 females) ranging in age from 4.6 years to 5.7 years participated in the study. The children attended a large, private preschool in a middle-class, multi-cultural suburb of Miami, Florida. Six classes of children were randomly assigned to either the experimental condition (EC) or the control condition (CC). For a ten-week period, a self-esteem development program, Developing Understanding of Self and Others (DUSO) was used as an intervention. MANOVA's conducted on all dependent variables at pre-test indicated no significant differences between subjects before intervention procedures. MANOVA's using post-test scores yielded significantly higher scores for the experimental group on one of the self-esteem measures (JPPSST), but not the other (BASE), and on the creativity measure (TCAM). Socio-demographic variables of gender and birth order were not significantly correlated with self-esteem or creativity at the time of pre-test. Pearson product moment correlations for the total sample indicated a positive and marginally significant relationship between the JPPSST and the TCAM at pre-test and a significant relationship between the measures at post-test. Explanations for these findings are discussed, as are implications and recommendations for future research.