Adaptation of Rosenberg´s Self-Esteem Scale and Ebeps-A© Self-Esteem Subscale on Portuguese Students

Abstract

Research relating to the study of personal factors of students is currently of great importance especially those focusing on students' self-esteem. The goal of this research is to analyze the psychometric properties of Rosenberg´s Self-esteem scale and the Psychosocial Wellbeing Scale (EBEPS-A©) subscale of Self-esteem by studying the scales from two aspects which are whether the psychometric qualities of the instruments of self-esteem measures are appropriate for Portuguese students and if the instruments are one-dimensional or bi-dimensional. To understand this issue, two studies were developed for the psychometric validation of the instruments relating to self-esteem. One study investigated the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (Rosenberg, 1979) on a sample of 588 students comprising 70.7% females and 29.3% males. Another study looked at the Psychosocial Wellbeing Scale (EBEPS-A©) (Galinha & Loureiro, 2005; 2006) subscale of Self-Esteem on a sample of 605 students comprising 63.3% females and 36.7% males. A Factorial analysis created a 14-item Self-esteem subscale. The Factor analysis confirmed previous studies with one factor; high saturations, a variance of 49.657 and Cronbach alpha =0.88. For the EBEPS-A©, the subscale results point to a variance of 4.53% and Cronbach alpha =0.90 which validated the appropriateness of the psychometric characteristics of both scales. The studies conclude that these instruments have proven useful in the study of self-esteem with students and may be used in future investigations.