Abstract
The aim of this study is to clarify residential and psychological factors related to the Japanese students who tend to confine themselves in their own rooms. The questionnaire was answered by 268 students, 134 males and 134 females. The findings are as follows. Their tendency to withdraw to their rooms was not particularly strong, but some residential and psychological factors were ascertained to explain their withdrawal tendency. Two residential factors (density, number of equipment in a room) and two psychological ones (degree of self-identity, exclusive attitude) were identified to be related to the withdrawal by both sexes. Some differences, however, were found between male and female students. Furthermore, the female seemed more sensitive to the factors studied here. The mechanism of withdrawal must be further studied, but, in the meantime, the findings strongly suggest the necessity of empirical study on what their rooms mean to adolescents.
