At‐risk and not at‐risk primary school children: An examination of goal orientations and social reputations

AIMS: The purpose of the present research was to examine whether at-risk and not at-risk primary school aged students differ in two social and psychological domains (future goal orientations and social reputation). SAMPLE: A total of 886 years 5, 6 and 7 students from five primary schools in the Brisbane metropolitan area of Queensland, Australia, participated in the study. METHOD: The Children's Activity Questionnaire which constitutes three parts (demographic information, the Importance of Goals Scale, and the Reputation Enhancement Scale) was administered under standardised conditions. RESULTS: A series of multivariate analyses of variance (MANOVA) and univariate F-tests performed on each of the sets of dependent variables (goal orientations and reputation enhancement) revealed significant differences between the at-risk and not at-risk participants on both goals and reputation. CONCLUSIONS: Not at-risk children sought to attain an Academic Image through education and interpersonal goals, whereas at-risk children sought a Social Image and attached greater importance to physical goals. In line with this, children in the not at-risk group perceived themselves and ideally wished to be perceived as a conforming person, while at-risk children perceived themselves and ideally wished to be perceived as non-conforming. Significant gender differences were also found on both sets of dependent variables. COMMENT: The findings are compared to recent research conducted with high school adolescents.