ABSTRACT
Studies of adjustment are based on various typologies. Epstein and McPartland (1977b) treated as “outcome” variables sets of measures that we would classify both as “adjustment” and “personality.” Among the “school coping skills” was an index, “quality of school life,” which is very close to our “satisfaction with school.” Their “prosocial school-task behaviour” seems similar to our “meaning of school.” Their “disciplinary adjustment” is akin to our “hostility”, which we have conceptualized as a style of coping or a personality variable. Their other “dependent variables”—anxiety, self-reliance, and self-esteem-also seem more properly, within our framework, to be considered as personality variables, rather than as measures of adjustment, for they have no specific foci, but would appear instead to be fairly general and stable properties of the child manifest in the face of various demands for adaptation.
