Self Awareness as a Predictor of Adolescent Behavior among Nursing Students: A School Based Study

Adolescence is “a period of great strain and stress, storm and strife’. Every individual wants to live a healthy and peaceful life. Each one must be aware of one’s strength, weakness, feelings, perceptions, thoughts, behaviours, initiation, motivations and actions particularly at specific life events. Self-awareness directs to perform any work in effective manner. Adolescents are expected to have highest level of self-awareness as it is the most important turning point in one’s life Objectives: 1) To assess the level of self-awareness among the adolescents. 2) To evaluate the social behaviour of the adolescents. 3) To find out the relationship between self-awareness on the social behaviour of the adolescents. Research Design: Correlation study. Original Research Article Tendolkar et al.; JPRI, 33(40A): 76-81, 2021; Article no.JPRI.71234 77 Population: Adolescents in the age group of 13-17 years both males and females Sample Size: 909. MaterialS: Modified self-awareness Scale and Researcher developed Adolescent social behavior scale. Results: Self-awareness has positive non-significant (r=0.004, p=0.91) relationship with the social behavior among adolescents. Conclusion: The study findings reveal that as the self awareness improves there are chances of improving the social behavior of adolescents. There are many factors contributing to social behavior such as education, socio-economic status, parental education and their occupation, friends and facilities provided for growth, motivation of adolescents and the surrounding environment and most importantly the provisions for facilitating the interactions between these factors.


INTRODUCTION
Adolescence is a period of bio-psycho-social transition from childhood to adulthood. There is significant growth and developments occurring in internal body organs and external body appearance and social responsible behavior. Adolescents face problems of self-identity, academic and peer pressures. The three main identity related problems faced by the adolescent are the changed body image, the social image, particularly with respect to occupation and the sex role. Adolescence is a time of fantasy and the threshold to adulthood [1,2].
Every individual wants to live a healthy and peaceful life. Each one must be are of his/her strength, weakness, feelings, perceptions, thoughts, behaviours, initiation, motivations and actions every time. Self-awareness helps to perform any work in effective manner including daily activities. Adolescent must have highest level of self-awareness because a human productivity life starts from pre-adolescent period [2,3].
An individual looks at self from two dimensions, one is inner self as s(he) perceives, himself/herself as subject. This is "I" perception. The other outward self is from his/her environmental/ circumstance dimension as s(he) believes others are looking at him(her). This is "ME" perception [3]. Every person should expand their "I" and "Me" perception as much as possible.
Social relationships are closely related to self concept. Social relationships are relative in nature and keep changing with situations, persons and mostly guided by one's ability to acknowledge and use strengths in times of need.
They are continuously modified and re-created. Social behaviour is based on various feedbacks received by the individual in different situations. Amazing changes are noticed in the self-concept with the changes in the situational and motivational aspects of social interaction [4]. The self concept ranges between positive and negative poles.
Many psychologists and social scientists believe that 'self' is embedded in multiple systems such as family, neighbours, school, college, work place, culture, economic status, social status, historical background, etc. Self-awareness also depends on social context that contributes to the growth and development of one's abilities and self-worth as a person [5].
Self-Identity includes self-awareness and keeps altering in situational contexts.5,6 Family identity is largely developed in children, youth and adults. The cultural and professional identity begins to develop at adolescence. Professional identity development is the hallmark of modern society [6].
Literature reports that adolescents with pleasant appearance do not know about it and develop low self-esteem. Adolescents form an identity through continuous feedback and social comparison with other members of society, especially members of the peer group [7].
Self-awareness is being aware of one's own authentic 'self'. It is the ability to self-examine, ability to recognize oneself as an individual separate from the environment and other individuals. Daniel Goleman (1995) defines selfawareness as knowledge of one's strengths, weakness, drives, values and impact on others. The sociological perspectives of self-awareness indicates to being aware of societal standards and norms [7].
Neissor (1997) mentioned five abilities work together for creating higher degree of selfawareness namely ecological self, interpersonal self, extended self-awareness, private self, conceptual self-knowledge and self-concept [8].
Self awareness contributes to the personality and the social outcome of the person. Hence the investigators proposed to study the relationship between self-awareness and social behaviour of the adolescents studying in schools.

Objectives of the Study
 To assess the level of self awareness among the adolescents studying schools of Vidarbha region.  To evaluate the social behaviour of the adolescents.  To find out the relationship between selfawareness and social behaviour of adolescents.

Hypothesis
H 1 : Self-awareness may predict the social behavior of the adolescents.

Setting of the Study: Government and Private
Schools of Hingna taluka of Nagpur.

Method of Data Collection
Permission to collect information from students was taken from the principals of respective schools. The participants were contacted in their school setting. They were explained about the study purpose. Their doubts were clarified and they were assured about the confidentiality of the information.Data was collected from them by administering the materials for self-reports. It took on an average 20 minutes for the participants to fill the information.

Data Analysis
The collected data was analyzed on the basis of objectives of the study. Descriptive statistics of frequency, percentage, mean and standard deviation were used. Inferential statistics in terms of correlation coefficient was estimated.

OBSERVATIONS AND RESULTS
The above  Table 3).
The table shows that the relationship between self-awareness and social behavior is statistically very weak positive and non-significant at 5% level of significance. This indicates that selfawareness can be considered as only one of the predictors of social behavior of adolescents (Table 4).

DISCUSSION
The study aimed at identifying the relationship between self-awareness and social behavior among the adolescents studying in schools. The findings reveal that 519 (57.10%) of study participants were found to have High selfawareness, and 159(17.49%) had Very High level of self-awareness. The mean score for selfawareness was 130.85+12.03. The perception of Social Behaviour of 429(47.19%) participants was good. 360(39.60%) had very good perception of social behaviour, The mean score for perception of acceptable social behavior is 38.18 with standard deviation of 9.26. The relationship between self-awareness and social behavior is statistically very weak positive and non-significant at 5% level of significance. This indicates that self-awareness is only one of the predictors of social behavior of adolescents. This also means that as the self-awareness increases it will result into more positive social beahviour. The more the self-awareness the more positive is the social behavior of the adolescents.
In the literature there was no study found wherein relationship between self-awareness and social beahviour of adolescents was studied. However, findings of this study are in concurrence with the following studies-Fung, Camille in his study found that selfawareness was positively and significantly correlated with self-acceptance (r =0.42, p = 0.00) and quality relationships (r = 0.28, p = 0.05). He further reported that Self-acceptance and quality relationships were positively correlated (r = 0.24) but the relationship was not statistically significant. He stated the possibility of a third variable responsible for influencing these variables and directing their relationship [9].
Antonia Kreibich, Marie Hennecke, Veronika Brandstätter, measured and manipulated selfawareness in two correlational and two experimental studies. They requested their participants to list down obstacles in meeting their goals. All four studies asserted that individuals with higher levels of dispositional and situational self-awareness found more obstacles [10].
Stephen L. Franzoi Laura C. Brewer studied self-awareness by utilizing experiential sampling methodology, and found the relation between self-awareness and social context. They reported that the presence of others results in increased public self-awareness [11].
Zachary Ochieng Kasera1, Peter J. O. Aloka, Janet Odhiambo studied Relationship between Self-Awareness and Indulgence in Behavior Problems among Form Two Students in Public Secondary Schools in Kenya. The study reported statistically significant, (n=780 r =0.210**; p<0.05), positive relationship between Self-Awareness and indulgence in behavior among students. The authors recommended that the teachers and counsellors should initiate periodical students' psychological assessment on their self-awareness, to identify students with low level awareness and design interventions to improve self-awareness among students [12][13][14][15][16].

CONCLUSION
The study findings reveal that as the selfawareness improves there are more chances of improving the social behavior of adolescents.
There are many factors contributing to social behavior such as education, socio-economic status, parental education and their occupation, friends and facilities provided for growth, motivation of adolescents and the surrounding environment and most importantly the provisions for facilitating the interactions between these factors. Interventions at school level designed and developed through counseling cells to facilitate improvement of self-awareness of adolescents would be required to improve the social behaviours of adolescents.

CONSENT
A written informed consent was taken from each participant before recruiting them conveniently.

ETHICAL APPROVAL
As per international standard or university standard written ethical approval has been collected and preserved by the author(s).