The influence of developmental assets on self-care agency of elementary school students in Bangkok metropolitan public schools in Ladkrabang zone

Abstract

Self-care agency means the students' abilities in doing any activities by himself to pay attention to and maintain his health and safety with his best effort and without relying on others. It is divided into self-care of health, developmental self-care requisites, self-care of learning and self-care of financing. It is almost completely in late childhood. However, self· care agency depends on developn1ental assets in terms of internal factor (power of self) and external factors (power of the family, power of wisdom, power of peer and power of community). The purpose of this research was to study developmental assets and self-care agency of elementary school students and to verify the influence of developmental assets on self-care agency of elementary school students. The participants were 424 students (10-12 years old) from 4 elementary schools of Bangkok metropolitan public schools in Ladkrabang Zone selected by stratified random sampling. The tools used in this research were data collected from questionnaire based surveys of questionnaire about personal factors, Inventory on developmental assets for school-age children studying at Grade 4-6, and inventory for self-care agency. The stepwise multiple regression was utilized to evaluate the influence of developmental assets on self-care agency. The results showed that most participants have high level of developmental assets and rather good self-care agency. Regression showed that power of wisdom, power of self, and power of the family significantly statistically influenced self-care agency. These factors could predict 29.4% of self-care agency (p<0.001). Developmental assets are important factors that create good self-care agency especially power of wisdom. The suggestion from this study is that families, schools and other agencies should promote developmental assets in children because these will help their self-care agency for being a good adult living happily in society.