Self-Concept:

Assessment
and
Intervention
Ellie L. Young, PhD, NCSP
Laura Hoffman, MEd, Graduate Student
Ana Kemple, Graduate Student

Brigham Young University

 Objectives
• Participants will understand theoretical
foundations of self-concept
• Participants will learn about current
measures of self-concept/self-esteem
• Participants will understand how
development and diversity issues influence
self-concept
• Participants will understand effective
interventions for helping students develop
healthy self-concept
 Theoretical Foundations
• What is self-concept?
– Perception of self
• Perceptions formed by experiences
• Influenced by environmental reinforcers and significant others
• Inferred from behavior

• What is self-esteem?
– Some say it is subsumed in self-concept
– Some say it is the evaluative component in self-concept
– Some say it is the same as self-concept

• Seven features
– organized
– multifaceted nature
– hierarchical structure
– stable
– developmental progression
– evaluative component
– differentiable characteristics
What connection does self-concept have to
mental health, academic success, life in
general?
• High self-esteem is related to • Low self-esteem is related to
– Academic success – DSM Disorders
– Positive mood and happiness • Eating disorders
– Life satisfaction • Depressive disorders
– Physical fitness and desirable • Anxiety disorders
health practices – Interpersonal problems
– Social and interpersonal • loneliness
relationships – Learning difficulties
– Better coping skills • When children experience
success in a resource
environment, their self-
esteem tends to increase
– Substance use
– Gang membership
Aggressive behavior is related to
– Obesity
unrealistically high self-concept
– Suicidal tendencies
– Teen pregnancy
When a child has unrealistically high
self-concept and feels threatened, she
or he may act out to protect feelings
of adequacy.
What can school psychologists learn
through assessing self-concept?
• Understand how the child views him/herself
– Ipsative evaluation
• Attend to both positive and negative self-evaluations
– What strengths does the child believe he/she has?
– What weaknesses does the child perceive in self?
– How can these strengths or weaknesses be used in
designing interventions?

• To consider depressive/mood disorders

• Other . . .?
 Self-Concept and Self-Esteem
Measures
• Age
• Items
• Dimensions
• Norms
• Reliability
• Validity
• Diversity
 Tennessee Self-Concept Scale –
Second Edition
• 76 items on child form 5 pt scale
• Age: 7-90 (child form 7-13: adult form 13 +)
• Dimensions: Physical, moral, personal, family,
social, and academic/work
• Norms: Nationally normed, renormed
• Reliability: Internal consistency 73-.93 test-retest
.55-.83
• Validity: construct, concurrent
• Diversity: claims there are no sex, ethnic,
education, or socioeconomic differences in means
 Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory
• Age: 8-15, 16+
• 58 forced choice items
• Dimensions: General self, Social self-peers,
home-parents, school/academic, total self, lie
scale
• Norms: Locally normed in Connecticut
• Reliability: Internal consistency-.80-.90, test-
retest .88
• Validity: concurrent, construct, criterion-related,
predictive
• Diversity: none noted
 Self-Description Questionnaire-I

• Age: 5-12
• 76 forced-choice items
• Dimensions: physical abilities, physical
appearances, peer relations, parent relations,
reading, mathematics, general-school, general
self, nonacademic, academic, total self
• Norms: Normed in foreign country- Australia
• Reliability: internal consistency- total .94
scales- .80-.92
• Validity: construct and concurrent, cross national
validity needed
• Diversity: none noted
 Self-Description Questionnaire-II
• Age: 13-17
• 102 forced-choice items
• Dimensions: Physical, appearance, opposite-
sex, same-sex, parent, honesty, stability, math,
verbal, general school, general self, total score
• Norms: Normed in Australia
• Reliability: internal consistency- total-.94 scale-
.84-.91
• Validity: construct reported cross national
validity needed
• Diversity: none noted
 Multidimensional Self Concept Scale

• Age: grade 5-12

• 150 likert-type items
• Dimensions: Social, Competence, Affect,
Academic, Family, Physical, Total self
• Norms: Nationally normed
• Reliability: internal consistency- total .98
scales .87-.97; test-retest- total .90
scales .73-.81
• Validity: construct, content, concurrent,
contrasted groups, divergent
• Diversity: shown not to discriminate
Piers-Harris Children’s Self-Concept
Scale
• Age: Grades 4-12
• 80 forced-choice items
• Dimensions: Behavior, intellectual/school, physical
appearance attributes, anxiety, popularity,
happiness/satisfaction, total self
• Norms: Locally normed on Pennsylvania school
system
• Reliability: internal consistency- total .90
scales .88-.93; test-retest- .42-.96
• Validity: contrasted, construct, content, concurrent,
comparison of raters
• Diversity: Description of use with minority and
diverse populations included in manual
 Self-Concept
in Childhood
• Ages 5-7
– Self-representations are positive and virtuosity is
overestimated
– References to self based on competencies
• social skills, cognitive abilities, and athletic talents
– Unidimensional thinking (all-or-none thinking) is present
• “I am good therefore I can’t be bad”
• Ages 8-11
– Descriptive terms
• popular, nice, smart, dumb, etc
– Descriptions of self become contingent on relationships
– Personal traits become situation specific
• “I’m smart in math but dumb in reading.”
 Adolescence
• Early Adolescence
– Social attributes and competencies influence self-representations.
• “I’m a cheerful person and I’m also intellectual.
– Development of multiple selves, which the youth can utilize to function in a
variety of social contexts.
– Youth engage in all-or-none thinking at an abstract level, which leads to an
inability to integrate single abstractions of the self into different relational
contexts.
– This may lead to unrealistic representations of the self at certain points in time
• one may very intelligent at one time, whereas another time one may feel stupid

• Middle Adolescence
– Preoccupation with what significant others think of the self.
– Youth make finer discriminations in peer relations
• self with a close friend versus self with a group).
– Youth must now compare and contrast different attributes of the self.
– Contradictions discovered in this comparison lead to conflict, confusion and
distress in the youth.
– Self-attributes that oppose each other can weaken self-representations and
concern over what characteristics represents the true self.
 Age Differences in Self-
Concept
• As children age, their exposure to new experiences,
environments, opportunities, and reactions from others
help them acquire and develop domain-specific self-
concept.

• Some researchers have found that global self-concept

declines with the advent of adolescence while others have
found that is remains relatively stable.

• Bracken found that although domain-specific self-concept

appeared to increase with age, results were not found to be
qualitatively or practically meaningful.

• Kling, et. al, found that between the ages of 13 and 32,
self-esteem in both males and females is relatively stable
and even shows signs of gradual increase.
 Race/Ethnicity
• Claims of race differences in self-concept have been limited
and inconsistent in direction and magnitude.

• Some research suggests that Hispanic children have lower

global self-concepts than African American and European
American children.

• Some research has found that European American students

report higher global self-concept than their culturally
diverse peers while other research reports the opposite.

• One study reported that for ethnic minority adolescents,

the combination of a troubled historical past and the
challenges of current oppression and discrimination can be
barriers to the development of a positive identity.
 Race/Ethnicity cont’d…
• A more specific study postulated that African American girls disidentify
with the criteria that European American adolescents use to evaluate their
self-worth.

• African American girls were higher than European American girls on

confidence of their femininity, masculine skills, physical attractiveness,
popularity and the difference between their educational aspiration and
actual expectations.

• European American girls were higher on worrying about their weight and
social self-consciousness.

• When comparing the two groups based maturational rate, pubertal

development was much less pervasive for African American girls, which
protected their self-esteem.

• Research suggests that this resiliency comes from the structure of the
home, which typically has a female head of household and a matriarchal
family structure.
 Race/Ethnicity cont’d…
• Studies regarding ethnic differences suggest that the identification
with family and community provides strength and resources for
adolescents when challenged with conflicting expectations, racial
discrimination, and class distinction.

• One theoretical model proposes that stigmatized groups (e.g.

African Americans) protect their self-concept by

– a) attributing negative feedback to prejudice against their group

– b) comparing their success or failure with people within their own

group, versus the majority group

– c) imposing higher values in what their group can do well versus what
they cannot do well.
 Race/Ethnicity
• Although European American students reported higher
academic achievement, African American students reported
higher self-esteem despite poorer academic performance.

• African American males begin to disidentify with their

academic success as they progressed through school, and
that this disidentification allowed for their self-esteem to be
protected

• The relationship between academic self-concept and GPA

remained significant for African American female and
European American male students.
 Gender and Ethnicity

• Nonsignificant differences between Black

males and females

• Significant difference, favoring males, in

European Americans

• Black women tend to have higher levels of

body satisfaction than European American
women, due to a lessened pressure
toward thinness among Blacks.
 Gender and Self-Concept
• Ambiguity exists as to whether there are differences in self-
concept.

• Research from meta-analyses suggests that there is a consistent

gender difference in self-esteem, albeit small, favoring males.
Although differences are seen between genders at the onset of
puberty, the difference is not a large one.

• The most notable areas for the differences seen are in the areas of
physical abilities and physical appearance, where boys appear to
have slightly higher levels of self-concept.

• Girls evidenced significantly higher levels of self-concept in the

areas of Verbal, Close Friendship, and Same Sex Peer
Relationships. Boys were higher in Math, Athletic/Psychomotor
Coordination, and in the Emotional/Affect and Freedom from
Anxiety areas.
 Perspectives on Gender Differences in
Self-Esteem
• Peer Interaction
– Boys’ groups are oriented toward dominance where as girls’ groups are oriented
toward shared social activities.
– When in unsupervised mixed-gender group, girls tend to see themselves as less
powerful, which could adversely affect their self-esteem.

• Schools and Teachers

– Teachers interact with boys more frequently and give more specific and helpful
feedback.
– Teachers tend to attribute boy’s failures to motivational problems and girls’
failures to lack of ability.

• Cultural Emphasis on Appearance

– Women and girls consistently report greater dissatisfaction with their appearance
and their bodies than boys and men do.
– Perceptions of physical attractiveness are more strongly associated with self-
esteem for girls than for boys.

• Athletic Participation
– Participation in athletics is associated with high self-esteem among male and
female students.
– Historically, boys have had more access to this source of self-esteem.
 Gender Differences
– Gender differences in self-esteem are small despite the
numerous assaults on girls’ and women’s self-esteem.

– Benefits girls have experienced may have been at the cost of

boys
• Although athletic success is typically seen as a male role, not all
boys are athletes. These boys are failures in a highly salient
aspect of the male role
• Bias portrayed in the media about the expected detrimental decline
in female adolescent self-concept may lead to self-fulfilling
behaviors in females.

– Gender Roles and their effects on self-esteem

• Girls who were described by others at the age of 14 as being
nurturing, sympathetic or a source of reassurance reported
increases in self-esteem from age 14 to 23.
• Qualities correlated with an increase in the self-esteem of boys
across this same period include being socially at ease, feeling
satisfied with self, and behaving in a masculine manner.
 Interventions
• Use a theoretical and empirically based intervention model

• Interventions focused on reducing behavior problems did increase self-esteem

• Target interventions at the sub-domain level (i.e. academic or physical self-

concept) rather than global self-esteem

• Teach coping strategies to minimize short-term fluctuations in feelings of self-

worth

• Teach problem-solving and social skills

– Be honest with students—sometimes they do stupid things—they know it—
you know it—help them accept the consequences in a matter-of-fact way
and brainstorm ways to perform differently next time

• Provide opportunities for recognition of positive behaviors

– Service learning
– Academic improvement or accomplishing student-centered goals
• Increase academic or other skills
• Making goals and monitoring progress through charts
 Interventions
• Cognitive ‘therapy’ approaches
– Identify catastrophic thinking and teach more flexible thinking
patterns
– Teach that cognitions determine emotions

• Allow children to fail, to accept the consequences, to learn

from mistakes, to do better next time.
– Avoid rescuing students when they experience failure
– Provide support and encouragement as they face the
consequences of their decisions
• “I know you can do better next time.”

• Create a safe environment where students can feel

comfortable taking risks, experiencing failure and success
and learning from the process of stepping out of their
comfort zone.
 For more
information contact
Ellie L. Young,
Department of Counseling Psychology
and Special Education
340-P MCKB
Brigham Young University
Provo, UT 84602
Email: ellie_young@byu.edu