Abstract
The effects of living status, gender, and years of college were examined in a study measuring self-esteem and life-change experiences. 160 naive college students were placed into 16 groups of 10 based on their living status, gender, and year in school. It was proposed that boarders would have higher self-esteem and a larger number of life change events, that women would have lower self-esteem than men, and that the freshmen would have lower self-esteem and experience more life-change events. Two three-way analyses of variance showed men had higher self-esteem than women, and freshmen had lower self-esteem than seniors. Boarders reported more life-change events than freshmen. A negative correlation was found between self-esteem and life-change events. Stress seems related to the value one places on oneself.