As I psychologist I find it difficult to access one's self-esteem via a simple item. Hoewer, you can ask first a person if s/he feels good with himself/herself and then why this is the case. By so doing, you can anlazye mainly the justifications s/he fives for his/her sense of self-esteem. LIke you I think it is better know to ask directly instead of using long questionnaires.

KInd regards,

Orlando

As a BHC clinician of over 40 yrs. experience, self-esteem is one of 3 components. The other 2 are self-efficacy (competence & confidence) and one's physical presentation in the respective culture. I refer to this as physicality.

Rich

As a practitioner, there might be better rationale in using a single item or question to explore self esteem; i.e asking a single question about how a person 'generally feels about himself/herself'. In therapy or counseling settings, an initial question of general self esteem leads to further in-depth exploration of various feelings associated with it.

However, when it comes to research, using single item measures might be problematic owing to standardization of single items or the variability of scores from a sample. It would be difficult to produce indices of reliability and validity for such a measure, and using a single item measure as interval/continuous data does not go well in inferential statistics. At best, you can get categorical data by assigning categories of responses beforehand for the single question regarding self esteem.

To use long questionaires often lead to numbers. A a psychologist, I wonder whether it makes much sense to give a number while assessing one's self-esteem. As I se it, it is better to look at one's self-esteem in qualitative than quantitative terms. Moreover, as you say, the current trend is to ask directly instead of using long questionnaires. You can use I single item as a starting point and then perform a semi-clinical interview with probing or additional questions that follow the first answer given, for example, to the question: Do you feel/do not feel good about yourself? Why do you say that?

Kind regards,

Orlando

Thank you very much to all three for your valuable answers, I will take them very much into account

Dera Richard,

As I see it, self-esteem is related to self-efficacy and an internal locus of control. These three constructs help us explain part of humans' psychological functioning.

KInd regards,

Oralndo

Orlando,

Great points and ILC vs. ELC. And overall we also may be talking about personality as well and its relation to split-object relations and attachment subtype.

My regards to you as well,

Rich

I think it really depends on your purpose of assessing. If it's for measuring global self-esteem, I think it would be a good decision to use a single-item measurement. However, as an individual might have different assessment of himself in diverse settings (e.g. high academic self-esteem but low in physical), if the purpose is to assess specific areas, I think there might be other alternative measurement to use.

That being said, I am curious to see how this single item measurement will work compared to the other measurements of self-esteem (e.g. Rosenberg's). Good luck for your research!

Self-esteem is just one element. Self-efficacy and physicality are also important

in understanding this construct.

Rich