Autoconceito, habilidades sociais, problemas de comportamento e desempenho acadêmico na puberdade: inter-relações e diferenças entre sexos

The objectives of this study included: (a) a comparison of girls and boys self-concept, social skills, behavior problems and academic achievement during puberty and (b) an evaluation of the relations among these factors. Participants included 68 fifth-grade, public-school students (all aged 11), from five separate classes, and their five homeroom teachers. To evaluate their self-concept, the students filled out the Self-Description Questionnaire I; to evaluate the students’ social skills, behavior problems and academic achievement, their teachers filled out a Brazilian version of the Social Skills Rating System, which also evaluated these three factors. Student’s t-tests were used to compare boys and girls across the four different measures while Pearson correlations were used to examine the relations between the factors. The results revealed several differences related to the sex of the participants, and various important relationships among the variables. Keywords: self-concept; social skills; behavior problems; academic achievement; puberty.