Abstract

Making primary school pupils object, this study intends to check the level of self-concept and level of stress depending on the existence/non-existence of a disabled sibling and to investigate the relation between them. Sample consisting of 131 developing children attending schools with disabled sibling versus 450 developing children without disabled sibling were recruited, this study performed using with questionnaire composed of children's self-concept and level of stress. The result of study is as follows. First, while child with disabled sibling likely to gains higher score in self-concept than child without disabled sibling, the difference is significant. In the subscales of self-concept such as physical appearance and relation with peers, child with disabled sibling gains higher score in self-concept than child without disabled sibling and the difference is significant. However, parental relation, the group with disabled sibling lower score in self-concept than the other group without disabled sibling and the difference is significant. Second, child's stress level among the child with disabled sibling gains higher marks in sum of each stress indicator scores, but the difference was not significant. Third, it turned out that both the existence/non-existence of disabled sibling and self-concept affected significantly the stress of child. According to the study, the primary school pupils who have disabled sibling could regulate their stress if they have a positive self-concept. If we expend the program that makes the primary school pupils improve their a positive self-concept from early grades, they can increase the ability of regulating stress, thus we can expect, prevent problems caused from stress. (Korean J Str Res 2006;14:237∼246)

• Keywords: Self-concept, Stress, Disabled sibling, Primary school pupils;