The Rosenberg Self-esteem Scale: What Does It Consist Of?
Self-esteem is a construct that refers to the subjective assessment that people make of themselves. It differs from self-concept in that it deals with an emotional dimension, not a cognitive one. Low self-esteem is related to depression and risk behaviors, while high self-esteem usually leads to greater psychological well-being.
The Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale a brief test with good psychometric properties, is the most used instrument for evaluating self-esteem in clinical practice and in scientific research.
Dr. Morris Rosenberg received his doctorate in Sociology from Columbia University in 1953. He later worked at Cornell University and the National Institute of Mental Health in the United States.
In 1965 he published the book Society and the adolescent’s self-image (Society and adolescent self-esteem”), through which presented his self-esteem scale.
He was a professor of Sociology at the University of Maryland between 1975 and 1992, the year of his death. His work on self-esteem and self-concept has survived him and to this day he remains an important reference in these fields.
The Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale
The Rosenberg self-esteem scale consists of ten items; each one of them is a statement about self-worth and self-satisfaction. Half of the sentences are formulated positively, while the other five refer to negative opinions.
Each item is scored from 0 to 3 depending on the degree to which the person who answers identifies with the statement that constitutes it. Thus, 0 corresponds to strongly disagree and 3 corresponds to completely agree.
The items that make up the Rosenberg scale are the following:
Positive items (1, 2, 4, 6 and 7) are scored from 0 to 3, while items 3, 5, 8, 9 and 10 are scored in the opposite direction. A score less than 15 indicates low self-esteem normal self-esteem being between 15 and 25 points. 30 is the highest score possible.
What is it used for?
The Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale is the most widely used psychological instrument to measure self-esteem. This is because administered very quickly as it only consists of 10 items, since its reliability and validity are high.
Adolescents were the initial target of the self-esteem scale, although it has been generalized to the study of adults. It is used to assess both general and clinical populations, including people with substance abuse problems.
The Rosenberg scale has been validated in men and women of all ages. in a large number of countries and has been used in cross-cultural studies in more than 50 countries.
On the other hand, we must keep in mind that knowing people’s level of self-esteem is a way to approach their most internalized beliefs about themselves. People with some mental disorders or social, mood and assertiveness problems tend to have low self-esteem, which makes it more difficult for them to undertake ambitious initiatives to improve their situation.
For example, a person with low self-esteem will tend to attribute their successes to luck or the participation of external people or entities, such as the help of a family member; This means that they do not experience these “good moments” as a reward that they want to access again in the future (or, at least, to the same extent that they would be seen as a reward by someone with good self-esteem). .
Cross-cultural studies carried out with the Rosenberg self-esteem scale have found that People tend to evaluate themselves positively. regardless of the culture to which we belong.
However, the components of self-esteem They do vary depending on the culture. Thus, people from more individualistic societies (such as the United States) tend to feel more competent but less satisfied with themselves than those from collectivist cultures, such as Japan.
The scale has confirmed the relationship of self-esteem with two of the Big 5 personality factors: Extraversion and Neuroticism. People who are more extroverted and have a lower level of neuroticism (as opposed to emotional stability) tend to have higher self-esteem. In fact, it is hypothesized that self-esteem may protect against anxiety symptoms.
Psychometric properties: reliability and validity
The original sample contained 5024 participants, all of whom were high school students in New York; As we have said, Rosenberg developed the scale initially to be used in adolescents. A large number of subsequent studies have confirmed the reliability and validity of the Rosenberg self-esteem scale.
In psychometrics the term “reliability” refers to the absence of errors in measurement, while validity defines the degree to which the instrument measures what it purports to measure.
The test-retest reliability is between 0.82 and 0.88, and the Cronbach’s alpha coefficient, which measures internal consistency, is between 0.76 and 0.88. The criterion validity is 0.55. Besides The scale correlates inversely with anxiety and depression (-0.64 and -0.54, respectively). These values confirm the good psychometric properties of the Rosenberg self-esteem scale.
