Item-wording and the dimensionality of the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale: do they matter?

By E. Greenberger, Chuansheng Chen, J. Dmitrieva, S. Farruggia. 2003

398 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Some researchers contend that the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale taps two dimensions of self-image, whereas others argue that the two dimensions (positive and negative) are merely an artifact of item wording. To directly test these competing views, we had 741 ethnically diverse university undergraduates take one of three versions of the 10-item Rosenberg Scale: the original version comprised of five positively worded and five negatively worded items, or one of two alternative versions comprised of 10 positively worded or 10 negatively worded items. Analyses indicated that the original version fit a two-factor model, whereas the reworded versions generally fit a one-factor model. All three versions had high validity for different ethnic groups, but the revised-positive version had less overlap with a measure of depression, and both revised versions had less overlap with a measure of self-deception.

Subfields: Applied Psychology, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/88f5af8a6eae9b53c85c3ca2d14b66e1ceb3f0a1

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Citations in the corpus

The Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding Short Form (BIDR-16) (2015, result): “Replicating past findings (Greenberger et al., 2003), we obtained a positive correlation between SDE and IM.”
The Relations Among School Climate, Instructional Quality, and Achievement Motivation in Mathematics (2016, neutral): “This has been confirmed for a number of measures that relied on self-ratings (see for example, Davison and Srichantra 1988; Greenberger et al. 2003; Marsh and Gouvernet 1989; Podsakoff et al. 2003; Preckel 2014; Scherer and Gustafsson 2015b).”
Factor Structure of the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (2013, background): “These findings are consistent with previous studies and provide further evidence that researchers should be aware of possible biases and error introduced to their measures when summing across RSES items to create a summary variable (Ang et al., 2006; Greenberger et al., 2003; Quilty et al., 2006).”
Perceived Parenting, Self-Esteem, and General Self-Efficacy of Iranian American Adolescents (2010, background): “Similarly, scholars have found that self-regard and self-deprecation can differentially relate to other variables such as depressive symptomatology ( Greenberger et al. 2003; Owens 1994).”
Shifting gears: consequences of including two negatively worded items in the middle of a positively worded questionnaire (2010, background): “…emerge which are defined solely by the negatively worded items (e.g. Bolin and Dodder 1990; Cordery and Sevastos 1993; Fried and Ferris 1986; Greenberger et al. 2003; Ibrahim 2001; Idaszak and Drasgow 1987; Kelloway, Catano, and Southwell 1992; Magazine, Williams, and Williams 1996; Marsh…”
Careless Responding to Reverse-Worded Items: Implications for Confirmatory Factor Analysis (2006, background): “Instead, a model with two factors defined by item wording, method factors in addition to trait factors, or correlated errors among items with the same wording type have been preferred ( Greenberger et al., 2003; Marsh, 1986, 1996; Motl et al., 2000; Rodebaugh et al., 2004; Rodebaugh et al., in pres”
Self-Esteem and Identities (2014, background): “Extensive studies by Ellen Greenberger et al. (2003) revealed that altering the RSES by creating all positively worded items in the scale, all negatively worded items, or using the original items that have a mix of negatively and positively worded items showed no differences in the reliability or va”