The Study of Gender and Social Class Differences on Locus of Control among Junior High School Students in Shiraz

The aim of the present study was to examine the effect of gender and social class differences on locus of control in a group of Junior high school students. 144 students at second and third grades of school were randomly selected by using a cluster sampling procedure. Subjects completed the Nowicki-Strickland locus of control scale, which were adopted for Iranian population by Khair (25). Khair (25) extracted the following three factors from the scale via factor analysis: 1) power against hopelessness and helplessness, 2) resistance against involvement with parents, resistance in attainting aims and resistance against powerful figures, 3) chance and fate against attempt. The results showed that girls and boys were not different in total score and in second and third factors of the scale, but girls were superior with regard to power against hopelessness and helplessness factor compared to boys. Also, those students whose parents have high education were superior in the following factors compared to those with low educated parents: 1) power against hopelessness and helplessness, 2) resistance against involvement with parents, resistance in attainting their aims and resistance against powerful figures. Finally, by concerning the second factor of scale those students having parents with high - level jobs obtained greater scores compared to those students having parents with low - level jobs.