The effect of individual, familial and scholastic factors on depressive mood for the ninth-graders in Taiwan

Abstract

The purposes of this study were to investigate the effect of the academic achievement, self-expectation, ability grouping, familial support and teacher’s support on the ninth-graders students’ depressive mood.
The data of the research was collected from the questionnaire filled out by ninth-graders students and their parents on Taiwan Education Panel Survey, 2003. The sample size was 11647 by using a multistage stratified sampling. Hierarchical regression was used to test the hypotheses.
The results showed that (1) the higher academic achievement the students had, the higher their depressive mood; (2) the higher self-expectation the students had, the higher their depressive mood; (3) there was no significant difference in students’ depressive mood between ungrouping class and grouping class; (4) after controlling for the academic achievement, results found that students who expected to get a Master's degree had higher depressive mood than students who expected to graduate from high school; (5) when academic achievement and self-expectation were included, results found that low-ability-grouping students had higher depressive mood; (6) when academic achievement, self-expectation and ability grouping were included, results found that the higher familial support the students had, the lower their depressive mood; (7) when academic achievement, self-expectation, ability grouping and familial support were included, results found that the higher teacher’s support the students had, the lower their depressive mood.（8）familial support provided more protection on depression of high self-expectation students than that of low ones; (9) academic achievement had greater effect on depression of low self-expectation students than that of high ones.

Date of Award	2007
Original language	English
Supervisor	Wei-Ming Luh (Supervisor)