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Rosenberg Self Esteem Scale Analysis

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The Rosenberg Self Esteem Scale was originally developed to measure global self-esteem which is a key component of mental health (Hatcher, Lynne, & Hall, 2009). The global self-esteem scale was initially designed to measure global self-esteem in adolescence in New York in the 1960’s (Hatcher, Lynne, & Hall, 2009). The Rosenberg Self Esteem Scale is a 10 item Likert scale. These 10 items are answered based on a 4 point scale, ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree (Hatcher, Lynne, & Hall, 2009). The questions are divided into 5 positive worded items and 5 negative worded items (Schmitt & Allik, 2005). Positive worded items includes questions like “I feel that I have a number of good qualities” and negative worded items includes questions …show more content…

A score below 15 indicates a low self-esteem whereas a score ranging from 15-25 indicates a “normal” self-esteem, and scores higher than 25 indicated a high self-esteem. My score in the test was 21, which indicates that I have a “normal” self-esteem. Although the results tells me that I have a normal self-esteem, I was unable to find a test manual which provided a more descriptive explanation of what is meant by a “normal” self-esteem. This made me question the validity it may or may not have when administering the test with individuals from various backgrounds and cultures. What may be the norm in one culture, may not me the norm in another. Question …show more content…

The loadings of the items on the principle component were almost all positive with the exception of 5 countries (Schmitt & Allik, 2005). The mean reliability was found to be 0.81 across all countries (Schmitt & Allik, 2005). In the same study external validity was established, as they found that overall the generalisability of the scale items in all 53 nations global self-esteem was negatively correlated with neuroticism and positively correlated with extraversion which made provision to control for gender (Schmitt & Allik, 2005, p. 629). Between the 53 correlations 51 were in the progressive direction and 49 were statistically significant (Schmitt & Allik, 2005). They concluded that self-esteem meanings are similar across countries with low levels of neuroticism and elevated levels of extraversion (Schmitt & Allik, 2005). Similarly in a study done in 2009 amongst African American Single Mothers the RSE scale delivered good internal consistency of 0.83 (Hatcher, Lynne, & Hall, 2009). In this study they compared the RSE with both a depressive measure as well as a negative thinking measure. In both instances RSE presented with negative relationships with depressive measure (r=-.67, p < .01) and negative thinking (r=-.79, p<.01).

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