The Contribution of Family and Peer Interaction to the Understanding of Self- Esteem in Adolescents – Gender and Cultural Similarities and Differences

This paper examines the contribution of family and peer interaction in explaining the self-esteem of adolescents from three different cultural environments. For this purpose, we conducted a survey on a sample of 1,033 adolescents from Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedonia using the following scales: the Family Satisfaction Scale, the Scale of Loneliness in the Family, the Friendship Quality Scale, the Social Loneliness Scale and the Self-esteem Scale. There were differences in self-esteem with regard to the cultural background. The highest level of self-esteem was found among adolescents in Croatia, then adolescents from Macedonia, while the lowest self-esteem was that of adolescents from Bosnia and Herzegovina. There were no gender differences in self-esteem. The results of hierarchical regression analysis indicate a greater contribution from family interaction to the development of self-esteem than from the quality of peer interaction, both in the sample as a whole and in the three groups of adolescents from different cultural backgrounds. The greatest contribution of the family to the development of self-esteem in adolescents was found in Macedonia, then in adolescents from Bosnia and Herzegovina, and finally in adolescents from Croatia. The contribution of family interaction was significantly greater in the explanation of self-esteem in both boys and girls than the contribution of peer interaction. The results are consistent with the assumption that family interaction plays a significant role in the development of self-esteem among adolescents.