Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale

Measure Your Confidence Level with the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale

Self-esteem is a personal evaluation of yourself - whether good or bad. A self-esteem test is nothing more than a test made up by psychologists (or other social scientists) to help evaluate a test taker's overall level of self-esteem.

What is the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale?

Dr. Morris Rosenberg developed this scale from 5,024 high school juniors and seniors from ten randomly selected schools in the state of New York. This free self-esteem test is a ten item Likert scale* with items scored on a four-point scale - from strongly agree to strongly disagree.

The Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale has been validated across a large and diverse number of sample groups. In layman's terms, this means is that it's been tried on different groups other than the original sample group and found to be a reasonably accurate measure of self-esteem. For instance, an example of different groups would be "drug users", "child abuse victims", "college students", etc.

 

How to Use This Free Self-Esteem Test

The scale ranges from 0-30, with 30 being the highest score (each item ranges from a score of 0 to 3). The higher your score, the higher your level of self-esteem.

It is interesting to note there are no specific scoring markers to indicate whether you have "high" or "low" self-esteem. Instead, you're supposed to examine the research literature to figure out what is normal for the group you are studying (e.g., "drug abusers"). For example, one study⁴ sampled a group of male students ages 12-19 from nine school districts in the country of Canada. The average score was 31.36 (this was a scale ranging from 10-40). Anything below 21 was considered a poor level of self-esteem (so if this study had used a 30 point scale to measure these students, a low level of self-esteem would roughly translate to 16 instead of 21).

From a layman's perspective, if you've been abused, you probably already know instinctively if you have self-esteem issues. But taking this test gives you an objective "number" that you can use to decide what to do. For instance, if you're not enrolled in therapy and you score less than 16 (a low level of self-esteem for the students in the previously cited study), then I would suggest you consider enrolling in therapy to help sort out some things.

 

Child Abuse Data Experiment

ZenTactics is conducting an experiment to collect some data on self-esteem from readers of this site. So if you would like to help with the experiment, could you please email us and tell us your gender, age, type of abuse you've suffered (physical, sexual, emotional, or none at all; if you've suffered from more than one kind of abuse, please indicate that to the best of your ability), and score using our contact form? Once I'm confident I have some meaningful results, I'll start posting them. This way you can see the "average" level of self-esteem for this random sample.

Getting Started

If you wish to take this free self esteem quiz offline, you can download a copy in PDF format by clicking here. Please note you need to have Adobe Acrobat reader version 7.0 or later installed in order to read and print it. So if you aren't able to open the downloaded file, this is the likely cause. (Adobe reader can be found at http://get.adobe.com/reader/).

 

STATEMENT		Strongly Agree	Agree	Disagree	Strongly Disagree
1.	I feel that I am a person of worth, at least on an equal plane with others.
2.	I feel that I have a number of good qualities.
3.	All in all, I am inclined to feel that I am a failure.
4.	I am able to do things as well as most other people.
5.	I feel I do not have much to be proud of.
6.	I take a positive attitude toward myself.
7.	On the whole, I am satisfied with myself.
8.	I wish I could have more respect for myself.
9.	I certainly feel useless at times.
10.	At times I think I am no good at all.

Your Score:

P.S. A special thank you to the Morris Rosenberg Foundation³ for allowing the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale to be used for educational and informational purposes.

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