450 university students were administered the Janis-Field Feelings of Inadequacy Scale to ascertain whether it is appropriate to treat this scale as a unitary measure of the construct. Component analysis of subjects’ responses indicated that this is not in fact a unitary measure of self-esteem but rather is a composite of three distinct components of self-perception, referred to as: concern about evaluation, self-regard, and interaction anxiety. It is argued here that other frequently employed measures of self-esteem may be similarly misused, suggesting that systematic assessment of the common components tapped by various self-esteem scales is in order.
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