Recently Coopersmith 1 related subjective self-esteem of a group of adolescents to social and family antecedents. Self-esteem has been viewed as an important personality variable in postinstitu tional adjustment of former inmates. The applicability of a modi fication of Coopersmith's scale, the Self-Esteem Inventory (SEI), to prison inmates was explored. The distribution found was more nearly normal than clinical predictions for this population would suggest. Reliability measures were computed and found to be satisfactory. Further, the scale has a low relationship with age, intelligence, and socioeconomic status. A moderate relationship to tested grade level was found (p < .05, while the relationship to claimed level of achievement reached statistical significance (p < .01). In general, the scale was seen as an adequate tool for further study in the correctional field.
In an earlier study the reliability of a self-esteem measure was established for application in a correctional setting. In this study the instrument was used for repeated measurement of the level of self-esteem throughout the period of incarceration. The hypothesis we examined was an outgrowth of the work of Wheeler, which suggests that self-esteem would increase after the initial period of institutionalization, remains fairly high during the midportion of the individual's stay, and drops to the original level as release from the institution is contemplated. Our results failed to support this hypothesis. For most inmates in our sample, selfesteem increased during the first few months but stayed high throughout the remainder of the institutional stay, including the prerelease period. Various possibilities explaining this finding are discussed. N AN EARLIER STUDY,1 We made a case for the potential importance of measuring the self-esteem of prison inmates. We noted that measurement procedures must be theoretically sound, statistically reliable, and practical to administer. We pointed out that an understanding must be obtained of how inmates change in terms of measured self-esteem over time spent in an institutional settingat intake into the system, at various points during institutional stay, and at the point of release into free society. And, finally, we felt that the relationship between measured self-esteem and adjustment to the pressures and demands of normal social interaction outside an institutional situation must be determined. If self-esteem proves to be unrelated to adjustment, its measurement is of little value beyond permitting speculations about the impact of institutional influences.The importance of adequate measurement is dramatized by the variety of approaches used in different studies. Atchley and McCabe2 ap-1.
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