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Author(s): Peter R. Hills, Leslie J. Francis and Penelope Jennings
Article Title: The School Short-Form Coopersmith Self-Esteem
Inventory: Revised and Improved
Year of publication: 2011
Link to published article:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0829573510397127
Publisher statement: None
Running head: THE MEASUREMENT OF CHILDREN’S SELF-ESTEEM 1

The school short-form Coopersmith Self-esteem Inventory: revised and improved

Peter R. Hills

St Mary’s Centre, Wales

Leslie J. Francis *

University of Warwick, UK

Penelope Jennings

St Mary’s Centre, Wales

*address for correspondence:

The Revd Canon Professor Leslie J Francis

Warwick Religion and Education Research Unit
Institute of Education
University of Warwick
Coventry
CV4 7AL

Telephone: 024 7652 2539

E-mail: leslie.francis@warwick.ac.uk

C:\Users\Leslie\Desktop\Sandy Hughes\Articles\Hills\CJSP07-10-updated 100908.doc 02/02/2012

THE MEASUREMENT OF CHILDREN’S SELF-ESTEEM 2

Abstract

The school short form of the Coopersmith Self-esteem Inventory is a widely used measure of

children’s global self-esteem. Unlike the full length scale, however, it has been generally

understood that the short form does not allow differentiation between the major individual

sources of self-esteem (Coopersmith, 1981). The present study has examined the internal

structure of the school short form by exploratory and confirmatory analysis on data provided

by 3056 adolescents between the ages of 13 and 15 years and has demonstrated that after the

removal of six redundant items, the newly revised scale not only possesses improved

psychometric properties, but also contains three clear factors that correspond to personal self-

esteem and self-esteem derived from parents and peers respectively. The presentation of a

revised version of the school short form of the Coopersmith Self-esteem Inventory that is

psychometrically robust and demonstrates three clear sub-scales will allow clearer

distinctions to be made among the sources of children’s self-esteem in future studies.

Key words: Children, Confirmatory factor analysis, Coopersmith Self-esteem

Inventory, Positive psychology, Self-esteem,

THE MEASUREMENT OF CHILDREN’S SELF-ESTEEM 3

Self-esteem (SE) is a widely used construct both in popular and formal psychology

(Baumeister, Campbell, Krueger, & Vohs, 2003; Lipnevich, 2006). Maslow (1970) identified

satisfaction of the need for esteem as a contributory factor to positive psychological

functioning and proposed that the construct was made up of personal SE and esteem that was

generated by the positive regard of important others. SE has been defined as an individual’s

sense of self-worth, or the extent to which a person values, approves of, appreciates, prizes or

likes him- or her-self (Blascovitch & Tomaka, 1991), and has been related to many

psychological domains, including personality, behaviour, socioeconomic factors, and health

and clinical psychology. The construct has also been widely used in educational psychology

since the 1960s (Coopersmith, 1967).

Many measures have been designed to assess SE and by the mid 1970s several

authors (Petersen, 1977; Drummond & McIntyre, 1977; Wiley, 1974) commented that these

measures were generally inadequately supported by evidence of reliability or validity. One of

the best established instruments is the 50-item school form of the Coopersmith Self-Esteem

Inventory (SEI: Coopersmith, 1967, 1981) which was devised for use with children, and

designed to assess attitudes towards the general self and in the specific contexts of school,

parents and peers. The factor structure of the 50-item instrument has been examined in

several studies. Ketcham and Morse (1965) identified five factors corresponding to total

(personal?) self-esteem, social self-esteem, doing well in school, self-deprecation and self-

certainty. Kokenes (1978) identified nine factors, which were condensed into four bi-polar

scales broadly related to school, parents and peers and the general self, and concluded that the

results supported the theoretical dimensions of the SEI, although 17 of the 50 items cross-

loaded on at least two factors. Roberson and Miller (1986) extracted eight empirical factors,

although 13 items of the original scale were excluded because their factor loadings on any of

the factors were negligible. Correlations of the empirical factors with the Coopersmith
THE MEASUREMENT OF CHILDREN’S SELF-ESTEEM 4

subscales gave most support for the existence of the parental sub-scale, but the evidence for

the existence the other subscales was ambiguous and one empirical factor did not load on any

of the of the Coopersmith sub-scales. The factor structure of the school form of the SEI does

not appear to have been investigated further in recent years.

The school short-form of the Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory was developed to

provide an alternative to the SEI when time for completion is limited. The scale consists of

the 25-items (from the 50-item scale) which showed the highest item-total score correlations

in the full scale. It was stated (Coopersmith, 1981) that this scale does not allow

differentiation by subscale and that the validity of the scale had not been established. More

recently, Zhang (1997) reported the internal reliability and construct validity of the school

short-form to be satisfactory. A literature survey has indicated that the short form inventory is

still in general use, mainly as a measure of global self-esteem (for example: Delaney & Lee,

1995; Francis, 2005; Francis & Gibbs, 1996; Hills, Francis, & Jennings, 2006; Jones &

Francis, 1996; Robbins, Francis, & Kerr, 2007; Sapp 1994; Stark, Spirito, Lewis, & Hart,

1990; Williams, Francis, & Robbins, 2006), but the factor structure of the instrument appears

not to have been investigated. The present study aims to establish whether the school short-

form Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory has an internal structure that might extend the

usefulness of the measure beyond its general application as a measure of global self-esteem.

Method

Participants

All 31 state-maintained secondary schools in Cornwall were invited to participate in

the project, and 23 accepted that invitation. Within the participating schools questionnaires

were administered during religious education lessons among year nine or year ten pupils

(between the ages of 13 and 15 years). Pupils were assured of anonymity and confidentiality.

Completed questionnaires were received from 3056 pupils (1531 boys, 1525 girls) of whom
THE MEASUREMENT OF CHILDREN’S SELF-ESTEEM 5

34% were in year nine and 66% in year ten.

Measures

As part of a larger questionnaire concerned with attitudes toward religious education,

pupils completed the school short-form Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory (SEI:

Coopersmith, 1967), which consists of 25 items relating to three areas: global self-esteem “I

can make up my mind without too much trouble”, “I often wish I were someone else”;

relations with parents “My parents usually consider my feelings”, “My parents expect too

much of me”; and relations with peers “I’m popular with kids [of] my own age”, “Most

people are better liked than I am”, to be answered on a yes/no scale. Self-esteem scores were

calculated from the aggregate item scores with higher scores indicating greater self-esteem. A

full listing of the items is given in Table 1.

- Insert Table 1 here -

Analysis Strategy

Exploratory factor analyses were conducted with the SPSS statistical Package for

Windows, Release 11.0.1 (SPSS for Windows, 2001). Confirmatory factor analyses were

implemented with the AMOS structural equation modelling (SEM) program (Arbuckle

1997). Use of the chi-square statistic (2/df) is the most obvious way to measure the fit of a

model to data, but unfortunately the 2 goodness of fit index is sensitive to sample size, and

the probability of rejecting a hypothesised model increases as the sample size increases. In

consequence, many alternative goodness of fit parameters have been devised to evaluate

SEMs, but there is little agreement on those that are the most useful, and it is now customary

to report the results for a range of indices. In addition to the chi-square statistic, model fit was

tested in the present study with the Goodness of Fit Index (GFI), the Tucker-Lewis Index

(TLI), the Comparative Fit Index (CFI), the Normed Fit Index (NFI), the Parsimony Normed

Fit Index (PNFI), and the Adjusted Goodness of Fit Index (AGFI). For most alternative
THE MEASUREMENT OF CHILDREN’S SELF-ESTEEM 6

measures of goodness of fit, as a rule of thumb, values in excess of .90 are considered to

indicate a good fit, although for the parsimonious indicators, PNFI and AGFI, values in

excess of .80 are considered acceptable (Hoyle, 1995).

Results and discussions

Basic statistics

Reported scores covered the theoretical range of the SEI (minimum = 0, maximum =

25) and the average score (15.03, S.D 5.33) was in excess of the theoretical mid-point of the

scale. In line with other studies (Francis, 1998; Primavera, Simon, & Primavera, 1974;

Watkins, 1982), the mean scale score was greater for boys (16.07, S. D. 5.09) than for girls

(13.99, S.D. 5.34) and independent t-tests showed that the difference was highly significant (t

= 11.03, p < .001).

Internal consistency

The internal consistency reliability (Cronbach’s α = .83) of the scale was adequate,

but examination of the individual item/rest-of-test correlations showed that the contributions

made by several items were relatively small; for example “Things usually do not bother me”

and “I can't be depended on”, had item/rest-of-test correlations smaller than .20. The mean

inter-item correlation was .167, with individual values ranging from -.009 to .577, which

suggests that the scale is not homogeneous.

Exploratory factor analyses (EFA)

The suitability of the data for factor analysis was tested by calculating the Kaiser-

Meyer-Olkin measure of sampling adequacy, and the value obtained, .89, was more than

adequate (Kaiser, 1974). Principal components analysis extracted six factors with eigen

values >1, which together explained 48.1% of the total variance. The item compositions of

the six factors following Varimax (orthogonal) rotation, not reported here, identified several

ambiguities which made it difficult to interpret the nature of the last three factors which
THE MEASUREMENT OF CHILDREN’S SELF-ESTEEM 7

contained few items, and six items loaded more or less equally on two factors. Orthogonal

rotation produces uncorrelated factors, which may over-simplify the relationships existing in

real-life data. A scree plot, however, suggested the presence of three factors. After extraction

of three factors (maximum likelihood), the data was accordingly processed by an oblique

technique (direct oblimin, δ = 0), which does not force the extracted factors to be

uncorrelated (Table 1).

Table 1 shows the presence of three factors and none of the items loaded on more than

one factor. Six items had factor loadings less than the applied cut-off value of .35; all of these

items appeared to be marginally associated with the first factor, had low communalities

ranging from .03 to .15, and were accordingly discarded. The three factors were tentatively

identified as personal self-esteem (F1), self-esteem derived from parents (F2) and self-esteem

derived from peers (F3). Of these, F1 explains substantially more of the total variance than

F2 and F3.

After removal of the six items with weak factor loadings on any of the factors, the

revised scale comprised 19 items divided into three subscales: personal self-esteem (9 items);

parentally derived self-esteem (5 items) and peer derived self-esteem (5 items). Given the

small number of items in each sub-scale, the scale reliabilities as measured by Cronbach α

and reported in Table 1 are considered sufficient according to the criteria proposed by

DeVellis (2003). As a measure of global self-esteem, the correspondence between the 19-

item revised school short-form Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory and its parent 25-item

measure was high. The Pearson correlation between the two scales was large (r = .97, p <

.001). The scale reliability for the revised scale, Cronbach α = .83 was unchanged despite the

smaller number of items, and the mean inter-item correlation also increased from .17 to .21,

suggesting that the six discarded items are effectively redundant. The three sub-scales were

intercorrelated (F1 and F2, r = .56; F1 and F3, r = .60; and F2 and F3, r =.21), all significant
THE MEASUREMENT OF CHILDREN’S SELF-ESTEEM 8

at the p <.001 level. These data demonstrate that both self-esteem derived from parents and

self-esteem derived from peers are closely related to personal self-esteem. However, self-

esteem derived from parents and self-esteem derived from peers are much less closely

related.

Confirmatory factor analysis

A confirmatory factor analysis was first conducted on the three-factor, 19 item model

suggested by the preceding exploratory factor analysis and the results are reported in Table 2,

which shows that both the GFI and then AGFI have values in excess of the recommended

value of .90. Examination of the modification indices (MIs) suggested that the model could

be improved by allowing three pairs of error terms to covary. Covariance of error terms is an

indication that the items are statistically very similar in the responses they generate, perhaps

because they are semantically alike. The MIs suggest that the addition of error term

covariances between items c11 and c22 , “My parents expect too much of me” and “I usually

feel as if my parents are pushing me”, items c01 and c02, “I often wish I were someone else”

and “There are lots of things about myself that I would change if I could”, and items c17 and

c23, “I often feel upset in school” and “I often get discouraged in school”, would result in an

improved goodness of fit. Since these items are clearly semantically alike, the corresponding

error term covariances were added in turn. The results that are also reported in Table 2, show

that these modifications resulted in progressive improvements and together provided values

in excess of .90 for six of the seven goodness-of-fit indices employed. Reference was made

above to the difficulties associated with the use of the 2 goodness of fit index with large

samples, and with the present sample (N = 3060), Table 2 shows that the observed value,

8.56, is in excess of even the most relaxed recommended acceptable value, 2/df < 5

(Wheaton, Muthén, Alwin and Summers, 1977). When the final analysis was repeated with a

smaller randomly selected sample (N = 250), the 2/df value fell to 1.82 less than the most
THE MEASUREMENT OF CHILDREN’S SELF-ESTEEM 9

conservative recommended acceptable value of 2 (Byrne, 1989). It was therefore concluded

that the revised school short-form Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory has a psychometrically

sound factor structure.

Conclusions

The present study set out to examine the internal structure of the school short form of

the Coopersmith Self-esteem Inventory, a widely used measure of children’s global self-

esteem, and also to explore ways of developing and improving this well-established measure.

It has been shown that after the removal of six redundant items, the newly revised instrument

possesses improved psychometric properties, and also contains three clear factors. Three

main conclusions emerge from the study.

First, the correlation between the original 25-item form of the instrument and the new

19-item scale is high, r = .97, so the present study does not call into question the findings of

several decades of research which have employed the former 25-item instrument as a

measure of global self-esteem.

Second, one of the main reasons for the development of the 25-item form of the SEI

was to provide a shorter and more economical instrument for research purposes when the

time for administration of the questionnaire was limited. The present findings suggest,

however, that there remains unnecessary redundancy in the 25-item instrument and that the

development of an even shorter form has produced not only a more economical scale, but has

also resulted in a scale with enhanced psychometric properties.

Third, a supposed disadvantage of the 25-item short form in comparison with the 50-

item parent instrument is that it has been generally understood that the short form does not

allow differentiation among the major sources of self-esteem (Coopersmith, 1981). The

present findings, however, have demonstrated that the revised scale contains three clear
THE MEASUREMENT OF CHILDREN’S SELF-ESTEEM 10

factors corresponding to personal self-esteem and self-esteem derived from parent and peers

respectively.

On the basis of these conclusions three practical recommendations may be advanced.

The first recommendation concerns the use of this revision of the school short-form of the

Coopersmith Self-esteem Inventory in further research. This instrument has the advantage of

clear continuity with established research using both the 50-item form and the 25-item form,

and the additional advantages of being shorter and quicker to complete (with only 19 items),

of being psychometrically robust without any redundancy, and of distinguishing between

three sources of self-esteem.

The second recommendation concerns the potential offered for re-analysis of existing

data generated by studies using the 25-item form. Since all the constituent items of the

revised scale are present in the original scale, it will be relatively easy to adapt previously

collected data in order to isolate and to explore the correlates of the three different sources of

self-esteem.

The third recommendation concerns the potential application of this 19-item

instrument among other screening instruments and assessment batteries in contexts of

psychological and counselling practice. In a relatively unobtrusive way the factor structure of

this short instrument may be useful in providing insight not only into general levels of self-

esteem, but also into the sources of self-esteem, particularly as these sources impact

relationships with parents or relationships with peers.

Note

Sadly Dr Peter R Hills died shortly after the completion of this manuscript. His co-authors

wish to dedicate the paper in memory of collaboration and friendship.

THE MEASUREMENT OF CHILDREN’S SELF-ESTEEM 11

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THE MEASUREMENT OF CHILDREN’S SELF-ESTEEM 14

Table 1

Oblique factor analysis of the Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory Short Form

Item M S.D. F1 F2 F3 h2
C01 .47.50 I often wish I were someone else (-) .65 .38
C03 .33.47 There are lots of things about myself I'd change
if I could (-) .61 .29
C15 .56.50 I have a low opinion of myself (-) .54 .33
C17 .70.46 I often feel upset in school (-) .47 .30
C05 .61.49 I get easily upset at home (-) .45 .27
C13 .59.49 Things are all mixed up in my life (-) .45 .39
C23 .67.47 I often get discouraged in school (-) .40 .23
C12 .54.50 It is pretty tough to be me (-) .39 .29
C18 .45.50 I am not as nice looking as most people (-) .38 .19
C07 .72.45 It takes me a long time to get used to anything new (-) .12
C10 .68.47 I give in very easily (-) .12
C02 .45.50 I find it hard to talk in front of the class (-) .15
C04 .69.46 I can make up my mind without too much trouble .11
C24 .52.50 Things usually do not bother me .06
C25 .66.48 I can't be depended on (-) .03
C11 .62.49 My parents expect too much of me (-) -.70 .40
C22 .64.48 I usually feel as if my parents are pushing me (-) -.66 .39
C20 .65.48 My parents understand me -.61 .37
C09 .69.46 My parents usually consider my feelings -.58 .31
C16 .51.50 There are many times when I would like to leave
home (-) -.43 .31
C08 .75.43 I am popular with kids my own age .64 .30
C06 .85.36 I am a lot of fun to be with .56 .21
C19 .75.43 If I have something to say I usually say it .41 .17
C14 .46.50 Kids usually follow my ideas .38 .13
C21 .50.50 Most people are better liked than me (-) .36 .33
Eigen value 5.34 3.12 1.34
Variance explained before rotation (%) 26.1 10.3 6.9
Cronbach’s α .74 .76 .63

Notes:
Factor loadings < .30 not shown
(-) Item reversed in scoring
Discarded items italicized
F1 = personal self-esteem
F2 = self-esteem derived from parents
F3 = self-esteem derived from peers
h2 = the symbol for communality, and communality is the amount of variance in an item
explained by the factors
THE MEASUREMENT OF CHILDREN’S SELF-ESTEEM 15

Table 2

Confirmatory factor analyses of the revised Coopersmith Self-esteem Inventory Short Form

Goodness of fit indices

Absolute Comparative Parsimonious
Model 2 df  /df
2
GFI TLI CFI NFI PNFI AGFI
EFA model 1919 149 12.9 .933 .844 .864 .854 .744 .915
covary c11 1545 148 10.4 .945 .876 .892 .883 .764 .930
and c22
covary c01 1337 147 9.09 .953 .893 .908 .898 .772 .939
and c03
Covary c17 1249 146 8.56 .956 .901 .915 .905 .773 .942
and c23

GFI = goodness of fit index, TLI = Tucker-Lewis index, CFI = comparative fit index,
NFI = normed fit index, PNFI = parsimony normed fit index, AGFI = adjusted goodness of
fit index.
THE MEASUREMENT OF CHILDREN’S SELF-ESTEEM 16

Résumé

La version abrégée, pour le milieu scolaire, de l’Inventaire d’estime de soi de Coopersmith

est grandement utilisée pour mesurer l’estime de soi globale chez les jeunes. On croit

généralement que cette version ne permet pas de différencier entre les principales sources

d’estime de soi, contrairement à ce qu’on obtient de la version complète (Coopersmith,

1981). La présente étude porte sur l’examen de la structure de la version abrégée, au moyen

d’analyses exploratoires et confirmatoires sur des données provenant de 3 056 adolescents,

âgés de 13 à 15 ans. Or, il appert que la nouvelle échelle révisée, si on enlève six questions

redondantes, possède non seulement de meilleures propriétés psychométriques, mais

comporte trois facteurs distincts qui correspondent à l’estime de soi dérivée du soi, des

parents et des pairs, dans l’ordre. C’est donc dire qu’une version révisée de l’Inventaire

d’estime de soi de Coopersmith pour le milieu scolaire, qui comprend des propriétés

psychométriques robustes et dégage aussi trois sous-échelles claires, permettra de distinguer,

à l’avenir, les sources d’estime de soi chez les jeunes.