red to female adolescents attending urban schools. Female students are selected because considerable research ha shown that female adolescents are far more likely to suffer from depression than male adolescents are (Mondimore, 2002). Depression is selected as an index of emotional/behavioral problems because the existing research also shows that the prevalence of depression is high in adolescent populations (Papalia, Gross, Feldman & Olds, 2002).
The conducted research is an attempt to examine for possible differences in one index of the psychoemotional status of females in relation to differences in the type and nature of schools they attend. What makes this examination significant is that there is a possibility that rural schools may not have the resources to meet students' psychoemotional needs to the extent than urban schools do, making it likely that there may be greater numbers of females with depression in rural schools than female with depression in urban schools.
The basic method used in this study was the literature search. This involved a search of library and online database sources for books, texts, journal articles, and other materials using the key search terms "adolescence" and "depression" and "urban" and "rural" and "schools" in various combinations. Once several sources were found, the documents were obtained and read and pertinent information was synthesized. This research constitutes a report of the obtained information.
Wiersma (1999) notes that when research is restricted to a literature search there are two primary factors that can limit the findings of the study. First, information is being drawn from a substantial number of different studies which means that there can be wide variation in how terms are defined and measured. Second, different studies have different levels of internal validity and it is possible that at least some of the reported findings may not be as reliable and/or valid as others....