Annual of social work, Vol. 23 No. 1, 2016.
Preliminary communication
https://doi.org/10.3935/ljsr.v23i1.97
EMOTIONAL AND BEHAVIOURAL PROBLEMS IN YOUNG ADOLESCENTS – INCIDENCE AND GENDER DIFFERENCES
Ivana Macuka
orcid.org/0000-0002-8753-8991
; Department of Psychology, University of Zadar, Zadar, Croatia
Abstract
Adolescence is a time of increased risk of emotional and behavioural problems due to intense changes in many aspects of physical and psycho-social functioning. The starting point for the research presented in this paper is the Achenbach's multivariate statistical approach exploring the incidence of various problems specific to adolescence. The specific purpose of the paper was to examine the incidence of various psychopathological problems in younger adolescents: anxiety/depression, alienation, physical difficulties, aggression, rule-breaking, social issues, opinion and attention issues, as well as the incidence of specific groups of internalised and externalised problems. The paper also considered gender differences with regard to incidence of individual problems, and the relations between internalised and externalised problems. The results were also compared with the standard values established on a sample of Croatian children and adolescents investigated in the research conducted by Rudan et al. (2005).
A total of 937 primary school students in the seventh and eighth grades from Zadar (476 female and 461 male adolescents) of an average age of 13 years participated in the research. The incidence of various problems was investigated with the use of the Youth Self-Report rating scale (YSR, Achenbach and Rescorla, 2001). The results obtained for the entire sample show that adolescents exhibit a greater incidence of estimated internalised problems in comparison to externalised problems. The gender differences analysis shows that the incidence of estimated internalised problems is greater in female than in male adolescents. By examining the gender differences occurring in individual syndromes, the results exhibit differences in the incidence of the anxiety/depression and physical difficulties (more common in female adolescents) and rule-breaking – delinquency (more common in male adolescents). Furthermore, the research showed significant positive relations between internalised and externalised problems, and based on the comparison with the standard values established in previous research on adolescents (Rudan et al., 2005), this research shows a mild increase in the incidence of various estimated problems in adolescents.
Keywords
internalised problems; externalised problems; gender differences; adolescence
Hrčak ID:
164946
URI
Publication date:
4.7.2016.
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