Study of Gender Difference in Relation to Perceived Quality of Home Environment and Social Intelligence among School Adolescents

The present study was undertaken to assess how perceived quality of home environment i.e. family relations, continuing parental conflict and family members associations with adolescents vary by gender and contribute in the development of social intelligence. For this purpose data was collected on a representative sample of 156 adolescents. Studying in class IX, X, XI and XII (78 males and 78 females) aged 14-17 years from Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh. After building rapport participants were requested to give response on Home Environment Inventory (HEI) developed by Misra (1983) and Social Intelligence Scale developed by Chadha and Ganesan's (1986) administered individually. The findings of study after applying multiple regression analysis (step-wise) revealed that gender as a factor associated with social intelligence operates differently in terms of home environment. Male adolescents perceive their home environment in more negative manner in terms of rejection, deprivation of privileges and punishment emerged as significant predictors for most of the dimensions of social intelligence. But in females most of the dimensions of home environment were positive in nature like protectiveness, reward, permissiveness and nurturance showed positive influence on social intelligence. Further findings indicated that confidence was the only dimension of social intelligence that emerges significant predictor for control in male group. In females in spite of having positive influence permissiveness also showed negative influence on patience and nurturance on sensitivity aspects of social intelligence. Finally females were found to be more outgoing and socially more socially more intelligent in comparison of male adolescents.