The Application of Self-Esteem Measures in A Correctional Setting: I. Reliability of the Scale and Relationship to Other Measures

Abstract

Recently Coopersmith ¹ related subjective self-esteem of a group of adolescents to social and family antecedents. Self-esteem has been viewed as an important personality variable in postinstitu tional adjustment of former inmates. The applicability of a modi fication of Coopersmith's scale, the Self-Esteem Inventory (SEI), to prison inmates was explored. The distribution found was more nearly normal than clinical predictions for this population would suggest. Reliability measures were computed and found to be satisfactory. Further, the scale has a low relationship with age, intelligence, and socioeconomic status. A moderate relationship to tested grade level was found (p < .05, while the relationship to claimed level of achievement reached statistical significance (p < .01). In general, the scale was seen as an adequate tool for further study in the correctional field.