An Examination Of The Wording Effect In Rosenberg Self-esteem Scale

At present,there is still a big controversy about the nature of wording effects in Rosenberg self-esteem scale.Is the structure of the self-esteem scale a one factor or one factor with the positively and negatively wording effects? Whether positively worded items measure the same self-esteem traits with negatively worded items? Is the wording effects different from the trait factors in self-esteem scale? Does the wording effect have a stability across the different scale? In order to solve the above problems,the Rosenberg self-esteem scale(RSES),Dual filial piety scale(DFPS)and Self-monitoring scale(SMS)were used to semantically reverse all the items.A total of 1300 students were randomly selected from a university in eastern China.The number of valid subjects was 1198,accounting for 92.1% of the total number of subjects,696(58%)are boys,502(42%)are girls.Average age is 18.7(SD = 1.05).In order to analyze the impact of positively and negatively worded items on the self-esteem scale,we used reliability analysis and confirmatory factors analysis on the various versions of the self-esteem scale Finally,a variety of scales were used to carry out the CFA method to detect the nature of the wording effect in different measurement tools.The research indicates:(1)The wording effects on the reliability of self-esteem scale is small,but it can seriously affect the construct validity of the scale.(2)In the Chinese sets,both positively and negatively worded items in selfesteem scale have the wording effects,and the proportion of the variation explained by the wording effects is less than the proportion of the trait factors.(3)The wording effects do not undermine the single-dimensional structure of self-esteem scale,positively worded items are measured the same self-esteem traits with negatively worded items;Similarly,the wording effects did not damage the structure of scale,The filial scale is a one-dimensional factor structure.(4)The wording effects are highly consistent in the self-esteem,filial piety,the general health scale,the wording effects have the stability of the cross-scale,we will identified the effects as a stable response style or even personality traits.