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COOPERSMITH SELF-ESTEEM INVENTORY

Description:

The Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory (SEI; Coopersmith, 1981) measures evaluative attitudes
toward the self in social, academic, family, and personal areas of experience. Coopersmith
defined self-esteem as a judgment of worthiness that is expressed by the attitudes he or she holds
toward the self. He believes that self-esteem is significantly associated with effective
functioning, such as school performance.

Each questionnaire presents respondents with generally favorable or generally unfavorable

statements about the self, which they indicate as “like me” or “unlike me.” The School Form is a
50-item inventory designed for 8- to 15-year-old children. It has provides a Total Self Score as
well as scores on four subscales: General Self (Gen), Social Self/Peers (Soc), Home/Parents (H),
and School/Academic (Sch). The School Form is accompanied by an 8-item Lie Scale to assess
defensiveness. The School Short Form is comprised of 25 items from the School Form. The
Adult Form is an adaptation of the School Short Form for individuals over 15 years of age.

Administration time rarely exceeds 10 minutes. The instrument can be hand scored in a few
minute using scoring keys. For interpretation, high scores correspond to high self-esteem. A high
Lie scale score suggests defensiveness (indicates that the test taker attempted to respond
positively to all items).

Technical Information

Norm Group: The SEI was administered to 643 public school children in grades 3 through 8.
The sample consisted primarily of students from the lower and middle upper socioeconomic
ranges. The test manual stated that, “a considerable number of Spanish surnamed and Black
children were included in the sample.” The manual strongly recommends that users develop local
norm groups.

Reliability

Test-retest: The test-retest reliability coefficient after a 5 week interval (with a sample of 30 5th
graders) was .88. Test-retest reliability after a three year interval (with a sample of 56 public
school children) was .70.

Internal consistency: Studies reported KR20 coefficients ranging from .87 to 92 on scores for
school children in grades 4 to 8.

Alternate forms: A study comparing the SEI to a Canadian version of the test (using a sample of
198 children in 3rd through 6th grades) found correlation coefficients ranging from .71 to .80.

Validity
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Content Validity Evidence: Most of the items on the SEI School form were adapted from scale
items used by Rogers and Dymond (1954) in their classic study of nondirective psychotherapy;
several original items were also included. All of the statements were worded for use with
children aged eight to ten. Five psychologists sorted the items into two groups—those indicative
of high self-esteem and those indicative of low self-esteem. Items that seemed repetitious or
ambiguous, or about which there was disagreement, were eliminated.

Concurrent Validity Evidence: SEI scores correlated with the SRA Achievement Series and the
Lorge Thorndike Intelligence Test at .33 and .30 respectively.

Predictive Validity Evidence: Reading Gifted Evaluation Scale (a measure of reading

achievement) scores correlated with the SEI General Self Subscale and Lie Scale scores at .35
and .39 respectively.

Convergent validity Evidence: Correlation between SEI scores and the California
Psychological Inventory Self-Acceptance Scale was .45.

Subscale Intercorrelations (internal structure):

General Self Social Self- Home-Parents School- Lie Scale*

Peers Academic
General Self ― .49 .52 .42 -.02
Social Self-Peers ― .28 .29 -.09
Home-Parents ― .45 -.04
School-Academic ― -.12

Coopersmith, S. (1981). Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventories: Manual. Menlo Park, CA: Mind
Garden, Inc.