Discriminant Analysis of Popular and Rejected Children Based on Their Communicative Competence and Conflict-Resolving Strategies
Kyeong Hwa Lee , Hye Young Jung
Abstract
The purposes of this study were to test the differences in communicative competence and conflict-resolving strategies between both popular and rejected children, and to thereby verify the discriminance of communicative competence and conflict-resolving strategies for both types of children. 52 popular children and 41 rejected children from among a pool of 202 6th grade elementary students were selected, and the data were analyzed by means of independent sample t-test and discriminant analysis. The research findings are as follows:First, listen up (sub-factors of perceiving), self-presentation, planning, and coding revealed statistically significant differences between the popular and the rejected children. Second, only negotiation and cooperation strategies revealed any statistically significant differences between the popular and the rejected children, while other sub-factors of conflict- resolving strategies indicated broad indifference between them. Third, it was only the factor of planning among 5 factors of communicative competence and 4 factors within conflict-resolving strategies which indicated that it was the most discriminant predictor between the popular and the rejected children. These results suggest that a comprehensive program is needed to improve the communicative competence and conflict-resolving strategies of rejected children.