Ego Development in Juvenile Delinquency among Bahraini Youths

The rapid modernization in the Kingdom of Bahrain has brought wealth and prosperity but also many
stresses in its traditional social roles and relations. The advent of juvenile delinquency is regarded as a
symptom of such social changes.
In this study, certain measures were administered to a group of 30 juvenile offenders which were
compared with those of 30 high school pupils who had no prior record of delinquency. Interrelations
with delinquency versus non-delinquency statuses were hypothesized among the following study
variables; family conditions, measured by the Parental Acceptance/Rejection Questionnaire and the ego
development, measured by the Washington University Sentence Completion Test. Both these
instruments were tested before by translation into Arabic and application on Arabic populations. The
results showed that certain social and economic status criteria were significantly related to the
delinquency status. Discriminant analysis revealed that level of ego development contributed
enormously more to the prediction than any single another variable. Significant contributions were also
made by the level of mother’s education, of father’s occupation and other family conditions such as the
father being married to more than one wife and mothers being strictly housewives only.
These findings reveal social psychological changes due to rapid modernization that affect the core of the
family system.