DEVELOPMENT AND ANALYSIS OF AN ADOLESCENT SELF-ESTEEM SCALE

Abstract

Recent researchers have documented that there are basic differences in the nature of self-esteem of individuals from different cultures. The notion is that individualists are socialised to attend to their own internal attributes. Thus, in individualistic cultures, a person's unique attitudes, emotions and cognitions are highly salient characteristics when making judgements about oneself. In contrast, collectivists are socialised to fit into the community and to do their duty. Thus, how a collectivist feels about himself or herself may be more externally based, as their place in the social order is of great importance. A common characteristic of the existing self-esteem measures is that they are individualistic, in that they focus on individuals' self-evaluations based on their personal attributes, whether in relation to private or interpersonal domains. As such, these measures assess the level or positivity of individuals' personal identity and fail to consider the positivity of their collective identity as conceptualised in social identity theory. To date, few scales exist in the literature that measures collective self-esteem. Thus, the researcher hopes to develop a measure of self-esteem for adolescents, tailoring to Singapore's context. Harter's model of the causes of self-esteem captures the link between domain-specific self-concepts and support from parents, school and peers. These domains in turn affect global self-esteem. Thus, based on the adaptation of the four subscales in Crocker and Luhtanen's Collective Self-Esteem Scale (i.e. Membership esteem, Private collective self-esteem, Public collective self-esteem and Importance to Identity), the 32-Item Self-Esteem Scale was constructed to assess how the three significant domains that affect these various aspects of self-esteem. Exploratory factor analyses supported three subscales. Membership esteem and Private esteem was found to be associated with both the school and peers domain. As the subjects were adolescents from the residential home of Boys' Town, these two aspects of identity were also noted in a separate parental domain. Public collective self-esteem and its importance to Identity were found to be associated with the peer domain, which incidentally had the strongest correlation with the overall 32- Item Self-Esteem Scale. This was also the only factor not significantly correlated with the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, which measures personal identity. Results from the demographic data also suggested that overcrowding in the household could lower the adolescent's overall self-esteem. Age was found to be correlated with the Membership and Private aspects of collective self-esteem, in the school and peer domain. It was also noted that the educational level of the adolescents' father and frequent occurrences of shouting and hitting in the family could have a negative effect on the adolescents' Public collective self-esteem, and in turn affects the importance of their Identity among their peers. Evidence for reliability and validity was provided and implications for social behaviour in relation to the 32-Item Self-Esteem Scale were also discussed.