A Study of The Significance of School Attachment

Abstract

Numerous studies have concluded that school attachment plays a significant role in the prevention of unusual and unhealthy behaviours among schoolchildren within and outside of school. For this reason, it is important to have a measurement instrument that can objectively specify the development and strength of this indicator on the individual, group and institutional levels. One objective of our research was to develop a questionnaire that measures school attachment and confirms its feasibility. We gleaned correlations from the relevant international literature to check the validity of the questionnaire. Thus, we hypothesized that our questionnaire could be used to measure positive correlations between school attachment and (a) school activities (Hirschi, 1969), (b) following rules (Simons-Morton et al., 1999) and (c) school achievement (Bond et al., 2007). Furthermore, we were seeking a measurable correlation between school attachment and (a) self-concept in school (Eggert et al., 1994; Williams and McGee, 1991) and (b) schoolchildren’s stress levels (Bond et al., 2007). The study involved 350 participants (149 boys and 201 girls) in years 10 and 11. The results of the study indicate that the questionnaire we developed uses the appropriate statistical indicators and that the correlations familiar from the international literature were borne out. We found overwhelming evidence that school attachment shows a positive correlation with schoolchildren’s self-concept in school and a negative correlation with school-related stress.