Abstract
Educators and psychologists are concerned with students' development of a positive self-concept. The underlying concern of this study was to investigate the self-concepts of middle school students and to examine the extent to which selected variables predict the self-concepts of these students. The study sought to (a) determine what, if any, differences existed in the self-concepts of music participants and nonparticipants and (b) examine the relationships between middle school music students' self-concepts and selected variables. The study was conducted in two phases.Phase One examined the differences in self-concept between music participants and nonparticipants. The self-concept scores of these two groups were compared; subjects were taken from a sample of 293 seventh-, eighth-, and ninth-grade students in Dade County, Florida.Phase Two involved only the 140 music participants. The data for the choral students' responses on the six independent variables were analyzed using a step-wise multiple regression design.Responses on the Piers-Harris Children's Self Concept Scale (dependent variable) indicated that the mean difference between the music and nonmusic participants was statistically significant at the.001 level of probability. Data for Phase Two included the intercorrelations among all the variables. The math stanine scores were the best predictors, accounting for 21 percent of the variance in self-concept. Additional variables added little in the way of predictive validity; the total proportion of variance accounted for by the combined independent variables was.29.