Early maladaptive schemas as predictor of adolescents runaway

Abstract

Objective: The objective of the present study is to investigate the role of early maladaptive schemas as predictor of the adolescent's girls' runaway. Method: The participants were 30 adolescent runaway girls from the health centers of the city of Rasht who were selected through a purposive sampling, and 40 normal girls who were selected through a cluster sampling from the normal population of the city. The instrument used was Young's schema questionnaire. Results: The results of the discriminate analysis showed that after the stepwise analysis, 4 variables were remained which from the 1st to the 4th steps are subsequently: emotional deprivation, vulnerability to danger, defectiveness/shame and dependence/incompetence. The results of the function group categorization analysis showed that all adolescents of the normal group were predicted correctly (100%), however, the discriminate function had placed 96.7% of the runaway group in the right place and 3.3% were wrongly categorized. In general, the discriminate function categorized 98.6% of all cases correctly and this claims a high predictive power and a significant validity for this model. Discussion and Conclusion: The results were compiled based on theoretical foundations and the role of the schemas in adolescent girls' running away was discussed.