VALIDITY AND RELIABILITY STUDY OF ROSENBERG SELF-ESTEEM SCALE IN SEREMBAN SCHOOL CHILDREN
BHY Mohd Jamil* _______________________________________________________________ * Child and Adolescent Psychiatric clinic, Dept of Psychiatry, USM
ABSTRACT
Self-esteem refers to the value or worth, both positive and negative that people associate with themselves. Rosenberg Self-esteem scale (RSES) is a brief and unidimensional measure of global self-esteem. A survey was conducted in 123, Form two students, aged 12-13 from King George V, Seremban, using 10-item Rosenberg Self-esteem scale (RSES). The questions had been translated into the Malay language and back translated into English. Exploratory factor analysis revealed two constructs of: (i) positively worded (items 1, 2, 4, 7, 9, 10) and, (ii) negatively worded items (3, 5, 6 and 9). Items 8 (I wish I could have more respect for myself) shows inverse correlation in the positively worded construct. This sentence could have been said differently in the Malaysian context. Cronbach’s alpha is 0.8. Overall, the Malay version of Rosenberg Self-Esteem scale (m-RSES) is a valid and reliable tool for assessing self-esteem in the Seremban school children.
Keyword: validity, reliability, Rosenberg Self-esteem scale
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INTRODUCTION
Rosenberg Self-esteem scale (RSES) is the most widely used instrument for the measurement of global self-esteem. Its brevity (10-item) and user-friendly format saved lots of investigator’s time in research. Bagley and Mallick (2001) showed that RSES was a reliable and valid scale for use with British secondary school students up to the age of 16 – 17 (1). They analyzed data from 665 male and 665 female pupils aged 12 – 19 from a stratified sample of four comprehensive schools in England for sex and age using Principle component analyses. Intercorrelation matrix analysis of ten RSES items had identified strong general factors in each group, accounting for between 40 and 50 percent of the total variance. Alpha values for the 10-item RSES range from 0.81 to 0.88. Females had been shown to have significantly lower RSES scores than males in each of the age bands (all values of t, p<0.001).
This study was conducted at King George V School which covers an area of 26.83 acres of land and is located in Seremban, the capital state of Negeri Sembilan (2). The school which serves the middle-class, multiracial population was built in October 1926, completed in 1927 and officially opened on 23 April 1928 by Mr. W.G. Ormsby Gore, Secretary to the British Strait Settlement in Malaya, in commemoration of King George V of England.
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This study was conducted to validate RSES in the Malaysian context. The research question is what is the validity and reliability of RSES in this sample? It is hypothesized that RSES isn’t a valid tool to be used in this population.
METHODOLOGY
123 pupils were recruited from King George V School, Seremban, Malaysia. All pupils from both sexes in Form 2, aged 13 - 15 were included. The exclusion criteria include failure to return parental written consent forms and failure to attend class on the day the test was administered. The respondents represented 93% of the sample population.
The information sheets and consent forms were distributed to respective parents two weeks prior to the study. All participants who returned parental consent participated in the study.
This study received approval from the school highest authority which represents the Ministry of Education, Malaysia. As part of a larger study submitted to the University of London, it was ethically approved by the Ethical Committee (Research) at the Institute of Psychiatry and Ministry of Education, Malaysia.
Participants were given a questionnaire in a classroom setting. Seating was arranged as for examination situation to make sure that their answers were secret and confidential. The questionnaire comprised 10 items of RSES, which took about 10 minutes to
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complete. The subjects were reminded to read the sentences carefully and circled the appropriate answers which would best describe their self-esteem according to the current feeling. For every sentence, there was a scale that went from 1 – 5. One denotes that students strongly disagree with the statement whilst five means that students strongly agree.
The questionnaire had been translated into the Malay language and then back-translated into English by a teacher with 12 years experience in teaching English as a second language. A pilot study was conducted consisting of 21 students to check the wording, language and understanding of the questionnaire.
The data was entered into the computer. SPSS and EQS computer programmes were used for data analysis. Of the 123 respondents, one had to be excluded from the overall analysis because a large amount of data was missing.
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RESULTS
Sociodemography
Table 1: Sociodemographic data Sex Male Female
62 (51 %) 60 (49 %)
Age 13 years 14 years
6 (5 %) 82 (67 %)
15 years 16 years
34 (28 %) 0 (0 %)
Race Malay Chinese Indian Others
66 (54 %) 25 (21 %) 27 (22 %) 4 (2 %)
Length of friendship 0-6 months 6 months-1 year 1 year-3 years More than 3 years
3 (3 %) 12 (10 %) 62 (52 %) 42 (35 %)
Males and females are quite equal in number. 14 year-old pupils contributed to more than half of the total population. The Malays formed more than half the total respondents while Chinese and Indians were almost equal in number. The Chinese and Indian groups contributed about one fifth of the total number of respondents. About half the respondents have been friend for between 1 to 3 years.
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Factor Analysis
Table 2: Exploratory Factor Analysis of the RSES Item
Component
1 2 0.606 1 0.796 2 0.857 3 0.495 4 0.776 5 0.834 6 0.673 7 -0.494 8 0.530 9 0.744 10 Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis. Rotation Method: Varimax with Kaiser Normalization. Rotation converged in 3 iterations.
Items 1, 2, 4, 7 and 10 correspond to positively worded items. Similarly, items 3, 5, 6 and 9 correspond to negatively worded items in both samples. Items 8, “I wish I could have more respect for myself” showed inverse correlation in this sample. This sentence is confusing when translated into foreign language when “respects for oneself” could be said in different ways, in different cultures.
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Table 3: Intercorrelation of the 10-item Rosenberg self-esteem scale Item
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
1 1.00 2 0.40***
1.00
3 0.28**
0.21**
4 0.23**
0.44*** 0.27** 1.00
5 0.11 (NS) 6 0.32***
0.27**
0.48*** 0.35*** 1.00
0.22**
0.68*** 0.23** 0.52*** 1.00
1.00
7 0.41***
0.36*** 0.27** 0.28** 0.10 (NS) 8 -0.14 (NS) -0.31*** -0.14 -0.16* -0.09 (NS) (NS) 0.36*** 0.37*** 0.28** 0.20* 9 0.22** 10 0.43***
0.34*** 1.00 -0.16* -0.22** 1.00
0.33*** 0.28** -0.07 1.00 (NS) 0.57*** 0.36*** 0.34*** 0.28** 0.39*** 0.42*** -0.23** 0.48*** 1.00
* Significant (1-tailed), p<0.05, **p<0.01, ***p<0.001, (NS)-Not significant, p>0.05
In most cases the intercorrelation between items are low meaning they differentiate well between each other. The Cronbach’s alpha is on the other hand is high i.e. 0.8.
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DISCUSSION
This study suggests that RSES is a valid tool to be used in the Malaysian context. As it has high validity and reliability, it is suitable for study on self-esteem among adolescents in Malaysia.
The problem with RSES lies in the fact that it has positively and negatively worded items. Some people find it difficult to answer questions versed in reverse-order meaning.
A study conducted by Corwyn (2000) had examined the factor structure of RSES in diverse samples of English-speaking respondents using a confirmatory factor analysis framework where eight competing models were pitted against one another (3). The result indicated that RSES was a unidimensional construct, but nonetheless, it was contaminated by a method effect primarily associated with negatively worded items. This finding implied that respondents low in verbal skills would have more difficulty in correctly interpreting negatively worded items. The potential bias inherent in RSES therefore lies with the negatively worded items.
In another study conducted by Pullman and Allik (2000) among undergraduate students in Estonia, they found no significant differences in the total scores of Estonian RSES between male and female undergraduates using one-way analysis of variance F(607)=0.57, p=0.45. A two-way interaction (ANOVA) between age group and gender
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for the Estonian RSES was insignificant: F(601)=0.90, p=0.44. The internal reliability coefficient of the scale was alpha=0.84, with average interim correlation r = 0.34 (4).
R.W Robins et. al. (2001) had reviewed four studies which examined the construct validity of two global self-esteem measures namely the Single-item Self-esteem scale and the Rosenberg Self-esteem scale. Rosenberg Self-esteem scale has been shown to have strong convergent validity for both men and women for different ethnic groups and for both college students and community members (5).
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I would like to thank Naliza Yaakub and Zulkifli Kamarudin for helping in data collection, Kak Mi for back-translation, Dr Muhd Najib Alwi for positive comments and criticisms and Dr Nick Goddard for overall supervision.
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REFERENCES
1.
Bagley C, Mallick K. Normative data and mental health construct validity for the Rosenberg self-esteem scale in British adolescents. International Journal of Adolescent and Youth, 2001:9:17-26.
2.
skkgv0.tripod.com/ (Assessed 12/6/05).
3.
Corwyn RF. The factor structure of global self-esteem among adolescents and adults. Journal of Research in Personality, 2000:34:357–379.
4.
Pullmann H, Allik J. The Rosenberg self-esteem scale: its dimensionality, stability and personality correlate in Estonian. Personality and Individual differences, 2000:28:701– 715.
5.
Robins RW, Hendin HM, Trzesniewski KH. Measuring global self-esteem: Construct validation of a single-item measure and the Rosenberg self-esteem scale. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 2001: 27:2:151-162.
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APPENDIX 1 SKALA HARGA-DIRI ROSENBERG Arahan Berikut adalah soalan tentang sikap anda terhadap hidup pada keseluruhannya. Sila baca setiap soalan dengan teliti. Tentukan samada anda bersetuju atau tidak tentang kenyataan tersebut. Bulatkan jawaban terbaik. Jawab dengan jujur. 1 sangat tidak setuju
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berkecuali 4 setuju 5 sangat setuju Sangat tidak setuju
1.Pada keseluruhannya saya berpuashati dengan diri saya.
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9. Setelah mengambilkira segalagalanya, saya cenderung berasa yang saya seorang yang gagal. 10. Saya mengambil sikap positif terhadap diri saya.
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