The Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale: its dimensionality, stability and personality correlates in Estonian

The Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES) was adapted to the Estonian language . By all relevant psychometric properties the developed Estonian version of the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (ERSES) was identical to the original cons truct measuring a person's overall evaluation of his or her worthiness as a human being, Both exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses revealed th at global self-esteem can be best represented as a single dimension. The te mporal stability of the ERSES was also very similar to the original version demonstrating an exponential decay over time. Like previously reported fin dings, individuals with high self-esteem tended to obtain similar and indiv iduals with low self-esteem divergent total self-esteem scores on two subse quent occasions. A joint factor analysis of the ERSES and the Revised NEO P ersonality Inventory (NEO-PI-R) scales led to a five-factor structure which replicated the normative North-American structure, self-esteem loading sig nificantly only on the Neuroticism factor. The pattern of correlations betw een the ERSES and the Five-Factor model of personality dimensions was very similar to that obtained in Hong Kong and Canada [Kwan, V. S. Y, Bond, M. H ., & Singelis, T. M. (1997). Pancultural explanations for life satisfaction : adding relationship harmony to self-esteem. Journal of Personality and So cial Psychology, 73, 1038-1051] suggesting that the relationship between pe rsonality and self-esteem is universal, not depending on a particular langu age and/or culture. The correlations between the ERSES and two other person ality measures, the Self-Consciousness Scale (SCS) and the Self-Concept Cla rity Scale (SCCS), also supported cross-cultural generalizability of the re lationships between personality and self-esteem. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.