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The process of adjustment starts from the birth of the child and it continues till end of the life. The adaptability to the obstacles of external environment goes on increasing as we proceed from lower extreme to higher extreme of life. Man has the highest capacities of all living beings to adjust to the new situations. According to biologist the term adjustment is for physical demands of the environment on the other hand psychologist use the term adjustment for various conditions of social and inter-personal relations in the society. From this point of view we can say that adjustment refers to the reaction to the demands and pressures of social environment imposed upon the individual that may be internal or external. These external and internal types of demands sometimes come into conflict with each other and it makes adjustment process a complicated one for the individual. In this way conflicts among the various demands of the individual creates special problems of adjustment.    Psychologists have interpreted adjustment on two ways --as a process and as an achievement.

Criteria for Good Adjustment

Psychologists have evolved four criteria to judge the adequacy of adjustment. They are --

1. Physical health: To be physically healthy the individual must be free from physical ailments like headache, indigestion, impaired of appetite etc.

2. Psychological comfort: The individual must be free from psychological diseases as obsession, compulsion, anxiety, depression etc.

3. Work efficiency:  An individual is called well adjusted if he makes full use of his occupational or social capabilities.

4. Social Acceptance: A person is termed as well adjusted if he obeys social norms, beliefs and values.

Definition of Adjustment

According to Gates and Jersild, "Adjustment is a continual process by which a person varies his behaviour to produce a more harmonious relationship between himself and his environment."

L.S.Shaffer defines, “Adjustment is the process by which living organism maintains a balance between his needs and the circumstances that influence the satisfaction of these needs."

J.C Agarwal defines that, "Adjustment is a condition or state in which one feels that one’s needs have been fulfilled and one’s behaviour conforms to the needs of a given environment or the environment is changed in a manner as it conforms to the needs of the individual. ’’

Adjustment as a process means interaction between an individual and his/her external environment. Adjustment as a process in an individual is studied throughout the entire phases of development, starting from initial days as infant up to adulthood. As our environment are constantly changing, individual's adjustment can be expected to change from situation to situation.

 Adjustment as achievement refers how effectively and Individual could perform his duties in different conditions.

One of the important phases of human life is the period of adolescence. This period runs between childhood and adulthood and for this reason this period is also termed as teenage. In this period marked physical changes take place which have significant behavioral implications.  These physical changes sometimes create problems among the teenagers which may create problems in adjusting with both external and internal environment. So, there is need and importance to know the adolescent's development to guide them properly.

Following points help us why we should study adolescence --

1. Understanding developmental characteristics and problems.

2. Maintenance of mental health.

3. Adjustment to responsibilities.

4. Curiosity.

Problems of adjustment:

Adolescence is the period of transition from childhood to adulthood which implies marked developmental changes specially the physical changes. Systematic studies on problems of adolescence for the first time were conducted by G.S. Stanley Hall who called this period as period of storm and stress.

S.R. Laycock stated the problems of adjustment into following groups--

1. Adjustment in home, school, society and to opposite sex।

2. Freedom from home.

3. Adjustment in suitable vocation.

4. Developing a sound philosophy of life.

Besides these problems in Bell Adjustment Inventory we found four types of adjustment such as home, health, social and emotional.

Rajeswari, S and Eljo, J G. J.O (2013) in their study on Emotional adjustment of adolescents school students found that majority of the respondents have high level of emotional adjustment. It is also found that there is no significant difference between gender and the level of emotional adjustment.

B. Ningama and M.Armin (2010) in their study "Relationship between adjustment and self esteem among adolescence " conducted on students of class ix in Mysore City. The findings of the revealed that home, parents, self-esteem had positive influence over emotions of the students. The results of the study also showed that school environment had positive impact over the health adjustment of the students.

W.M. Sureen and A. Jain and Ayere (2012) conducted a study on "The relationship among School Adjustment, gender and academic achievement among the secondary school students’’in Kisumu district, Kenya to see the level of school adjustment and its relationship with academic achievement, gender differences. The results of the study revealed that there were no significant differences between boys and girls in school adjustment.

P. Louis and A. Emerson (2012) in their study on "Adolescents adjustment in high school students: a brief report on mid-adolescence transitioning" to identify the adjustment difficulties I high school students within a city. The findings of the study showed that there were problems in the area of emotional, social and educational in both boys and girls but the difference are not significant one. There was no significant gender difference too.

Talukdar, L. (2016) in her study on “A comparative study on adjustment and emotional intelligence of deaf/dumb and blind children ’’found that both the categories of differently abled children have adjustment problems. It is also found that boys have more adjustment ability in comparison to the girls.

In the present study descriptive method is used.

For the study 200 teenage students are taken from different schools of Kamrup district, Assam. The sample of the study consists of 100 boys and 100 girls.

Analysis of data :

Table : 1

Mean and S.D. in different areas of Adjustment  of  male and female students.

Areas of adjustment	N= 150 (Male)		N=125( Female)		“ t “ value
	Mean	S.D.	Mean	S.D.
Home	8.08	1.77	7.96	1.96	0.44
Health	7.58	1.96	7.17	2.42	1.45
Social	6.57	2.05	6.34	1.98	1.03
Emotional	6.14	2.10	5.65	1.99	2.04*

Figure 1: Graphical representation of Mean scores of male and female students in the areas of adjustment (BAI)

From the table 1 above it is seen that the mean scores of male students in different areas of adjustment i e. Home, health, social and emotional are 8.08, 7.58, 6.57 and 6.14 respectively. On the other hand the mean scores of female students in the areas of home, health, social and emotional are 7.96, 7.17. 6.34 and 5.65 respectively. From the mean scores of male and female students it is seen that the mean scores of female in comparison to male students are found to be less.  From the analysis of data it can be inferred that the male students are more adjustable than the female .It is seen that there were differences in mean scores of male and female students but the differences were  not significant one accept in the area of emotional.  In the area of emotional adjustment the “t” value is 2.04 which show a significant difference between the male and female in the area of emotion. 

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