ISSN: 2222-6990
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Self-esteem is an extremely important core issue in the field of psychological research as it has a great impact on human development, health, well-being, and life outcomes. The measurement of self-esteem is a long-standing issue in psychology. Rosenberg’s (1965) Self-Esteem Scale is the most frequently and widely used self-esteem scale all over the world. This paper, through CNKI search, finds that 43 or 45 papers (with journal names containing the word “psychology” and key words including “self-esteem”) used Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale to measure self-esteem, among which, 42 papers used Chinese versions of the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale and most used the classic version (Ji & Yu, 1993; Wang, et al., 1999) with Item 8 translated in a positive tone and scored reversely. Through literature review, this paper finds that there are two Chinese versions of the whole scale; there is a dispute about the treatment of Item 8; there are four versions of the translation of Item 8; and there are five ways to deal with Item 8. Based on the previous study, this study proposed a new negative translation of Item 8 which is faithful to the original, consistent with the Chinese culture, and clear to understand. The reverse scoring of this translation of Item 8 is consistent with the original design of the scale by Rosenberg (1965). It is hoped that this study can provide insights into the future choice and use of Chinese versions of the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, the future study of self-esteem, and the future study of self-esteem scales.
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(Wu et al., 2024)
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