Simultaneous Administration of the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale in 53 Nations: Exploring the Universal and Culture-Specific Features of Global Self-Esteem.

Abstract

The Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES) was translated into 28 languages and administered to 16,998 participants across 53 nations. The RSES factor structure was largely invariant across nations. RSES scores correlated with neuroticism, extraversion, and romantic attachment styles within nearly all nations, providing additional support for cross-cultural equivalence of the RSES. All nations scored above the theoretical midpoint of the RSES, indicating generally positive self-evaluation may be culturally universal. Individual differences in self-esteem were variable across cultures, with a neutral response bias prevalent in more collectivist cultures. Self-competence and self-liking subscales of the RSES varied with cultural individualism. Although positively and negatively worded items of the RSES were correlated within cultures and were uniformly related to external personality variables, differences between aggregates of positive and negative items were smaller in developed nations. Because negatively worded items were interpreted differently across nations, direct cross-cultural comparisons using the RSES may have limited value.Keywords: self-esteem, cross-cultural psychology, personalityGlobal self-esteem is typically defined as one's overall sense of worthiness as a person (Baumeister, 1993;Branden, 1994;Rosenberg, 1979). Among the many devices for assessing global selfesteem, the self-report version of the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES; Rosenberg, 1965) remains the most widely used measure (Byrne, 1996;Wylie, 1974). The popularity of the 10-item RSES has been due, in part, to its long history of use, its uncomplicated language, and its brevity (it takes only 1 or 2 min to complete). In addition, the RSES displays a transparent one-dimensional factor structure (Corwyn, 2000;Fleming & Courtney, 1984;O'Brien, 1985;Whiteside-Mansell & Corwyn, 2003), though some studies have found underlying subfactors within the RSES (Carmines & Zeller, 1979;Tafarodi & Swann, 1996).The relative simplicity and accessibility of the RSES has favored a considerable number of translations, including almost all Indo-European languages (Helbing, 1982;Jerusalem, 1988;Shorkey & Whiteman, 1978;Vallieres & Vallerand, 1990) and also many languages from completely different linguistic families such as Chinese (Cheng & Page, 1989;Farruggia, Chen, Greenberger, Dmitrieva, & Macek, 2004), Japanese (Kamakura, Jukoando, & Ono, 2001;Okada & Nagai, 1990), Persian (Shapurian, Hojat, & Nayerahmadi, 1987), and Estonian (Pullmann & Allik, 2000). Because of its presumed simplicity, the psychometric properties of the RSES have seldom been examined with demand and rigor across cultures, often leaving open questions of structural and measurement equivalence.The current study addressed this concern by simultaneously administering the RSES, alongside other questionnaires, to college student and community samples from 53 nations. More specifically, the current study had five main objectives. First, we evaluated the structural equivalence of the RSES acros...

Factors Influencing Occupational Engagement in Day Centers for People with Psychiatric Disabilities

“…The final score indicates the balance between positive (end score of 1) and negative (end score of -1) self-esteem. The scale has been shown to be psychometrically sound across many cultures and languages (Schmitt & Allik, 2005;Wongpakaran & Wongpakaran, 2012) and has demonstrated good internal consistency and good test-retest reliability (Torrey et al, 2000). When tested on the present sample, the Cronbach's alpha was satisfactory for the positive aspect of self-esteem (alpha=0.75) and acceptable for the negative aspect (alpha=0.65).…”

A prospective service evaluation of acceptance and commitment therapy for patients with refractory epilepsy

“…The scale is uni-dimensional and produces a single total score, with higher values representing higher self-esteem. The RSES is a well-established scale that has been used and validated by a number of studies [31][32][33].…”

Refusal Self Efficacy, Self Esteem, Smoking Refusal Skills and Water Pipe (Hookah) Smoking among Iranian Male Adolescents

“…A higher score indicated a stronger attitude against smoking. iii) Self esteem, which was measured by using the five interval semantic differential scale Rosenberg (Luhtanen and Crocker, 1992;Rosenberg et al, 1995;Schmitt and Allik, 2005), rated on a 5-point scale ranging from 0 (strongly agree) to 4 (strongly disagree). iiii) Refusal self-efficacy: Five items were used to assess the students' perceptions about smoking.…”