Determinants of Self-Esteem among Undergraduate Students of Public Higher Education Institutions in Ethiopia

Self-esteem is a person’s feeling of self-pride or worth that reflects a person`s overall evaluation of his or her own value. The aim of this study was to assess determinants of self-esteem among undergraduate students of public higher education institutions in Ethiopia. Cross-sectional study was conducted at three randomly selected universities found in Ethiopia. The study participants were consists of 382 randomly selected third year students from college of business and economics. The data covers demographic variables and 10-items validated Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale. The collected data were analyzed using SPSS Version 20.00.Out of 410 distributed questionnaires for the study participants only 382 (207 male and 175 female) students with response rate of 93.2% were returned the questionnaires in this study. Accordingly, the result of our study revealed that female students has high mean score (33.67 ±4.14) than male students (27.47±2.89) of self-esteem. Multiple regressions analysis of our study also revealed that gender difference, residence and CGPA of students are significant predictors (or significantly related to) of self-esteem (P=0.000). This study concludes as the parental education, gender difference, residence, and CGPA of students are the main determinants of students’ self-esteem. But Parental occupation has no correlation and significant impact with students’ self-esteem. Thus, the researchers recommend further studies on this area by incorporating other variables and universities to boost the students’ self-esteem