A Comparative Study of self-esteem in nursing and midwifery students of Islamic Azad University of Rasht and its correlation with academic success

self-esteem is one of the most important factors of personality development in humans. It is feelings and responses that a person holds toward himself or herself. The relationship between self-esteem and academic success are different. This study aimed to compare the self-esteem and its correlation with their academic success in the nursing and midwifery students at Islamic Azad University, Rasht, Iran. This is a descriptive-analysis study conducted on 473 midwifery students who are studying at Islamic Azad University of Rasht in the second semester of academic year 2012-2013. Data were collected using a tow part questionnaire: personal information and cooper smith Self-Esteem Inventory. The academic success was measured by the prior semester grade point average. To analyze the data, descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation) and inferential statistics (Pearson correlation and Student's t-test) were used. The results showed that the mean score of self-esteem among midwifery and nursing students was 32/49±4/45 and 32/58±4/43, respectively. There was no significant relationship between self-esteem level among midwifery and nursing students (p=0/82). Also, there was no significant correlation between self-esteem level and the scores of academic achievement in two groups: midwifery and nursing students. (p>0/05). According to the findings, the majority of students had high self-esteem. It seemed that more attention to this concept is needed to enhance students’ mental health and academic success. Therefore, developing educational programs plays a great role on the self-esteem of the students.