STRUCTURE OF ARTISTIC SELF-CONCEPTS FOR PERFORMING ARTS AND NON-PERFORMING ARTS STUDENTS IN A PERFORMING ARTS HIGH-SCHOOL - SETTING THE STAGE WITH MULTIGROUP CONFIRMATORY FACTOR-ANALYSIS

The Arts Self-Perception Inventory (ASPI) and the Self Description Que stionnaire II were administered to 210 elite performing arts (PA) and 131 non-PA students attending a prestigious PA high school. Elite danc e, music, and drama students had substantially higher dance, music, an d drama self-concepts, respectively, providing construct validity evid ence through known group differences. Confirmatory factor analysis dem onstrated the 15 a priori self-concept factors from the 2 instruments and the complete invariance of factor loadings across the two samples. Consistent with predictions based on academic self-concept theory, th ere were group differences in the factor correlations. The three PA se lf-concepts were moderately correlated for non-PA students, but were u ncorrelated for PA students. Also, these PA self-concepts were more hi ghly correlated with esteem and school self-concept for PA students th an for non-PA students. Results support the ASPI's usefulness but sugg est complexities for W. P. Vispoel's (1995) proposed extension of the Marsh/Shavelson hierarchical model of self-concept to include PA.