A Study on School Adjustment and Mental Health in Elementary School Children from MulticuKural Families in a Rural City

Purpose: This study was to identify school adjustment and the mental health of elementary school children of multi-cultural families in a rural city. Methods: The participants were 168 elementary school children from multi-cultural families in N city. The data was collected from July 2nd to July 25th, 2008. The instruments used were School Adjustment developed by Min(1991), and the Symptom Checklist 90-Revision(SCL-90-R) developed by Derogatis, Rickels, and Rock(1976) and modified by Kim, Kim and Won(1984), Kim(1988) and Kang(2004). Data was analyzed using SPSS/WIN 12.0. Results: The mean score for school adjustment and mental health was 2.78 and 18.72 respectively. According to the general characteristics, there were significant differences in school adjustment depending on their father's age and economic status and in mental health depending on their parents* * age and calculation ability. The correlation between school adjustment and the mental health was shown as a significantly negative one.Conclusion: The result of this study shows that school adjustment and mental health in elementary school children of multi-cultural families were in the normal range and there was a significant correlation between school adjustment and mental health.