Self-Esteem, Assessment of

Conceptualizing Self-Esteem

Self-esteem is generally conceptualized in terms of phenomenological experience. At the turn of the 20th century, William lames defined self-esteem as the degree to which people perceive their accomplishments as consistent with their goals and aspirations. In the mid-1980s, Morris Rosenberg extended this definition by adding that self-esteem involves feelings of self-acceptance, self-liking, and self-respect. These definitions have been applied to both global and domain-specific self-esteem. Global self-esteem refers to an individual's overall evaluation of him- or herself. Domain-specific self-evaluations focus on a specific facet of the self, such as physical appearance or academic competence.

The conceptualization of self-esteem as a phenomenological construct is inextricably linked to its measurement. If people subjectively experience themselves as competent, likable, and valued, then they necessarily have high self-esteem, regardless of their actual level of competence and likableness. Given this conceptualization, it is not surprising that self-esteem is most commonly assessed via self-report scales.

Commonly Used Measures of Self-Esteem

The measurement of self-esteem is a long-standing issue in psychology, dating back to James's seminal writings on the self in 1890. Over the years, researchers have proposed a wide range of self-esteem measures. In addition to numerous self-report scales, there are “experience sampling” measures, pictorial and puppet measures for children, measures based on observer and peer ratings, self-ideal discrepancy measures, measures based on preferences for the letters in one's name, and reaction time measures such as the Implicit Association Test (IAT). The vast majority of researchers rely on face-valid self-report scales (i.e., scales in which what is being assessed is obvious)

therefore, this section focuses on several of the most widely used self-report scales. However, measures of implicit self-esteem are increasing in popularity, so this section also reviews the most commonly used implicit measure, the IAT. This section ends by discussing the degree to which different self-esteem scales and measures are correlated with each other (i.e., convergent validity).

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