Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory (CSEI)

Abstract

The Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory (CSEI) is one of the most widely utilized and historically foundational psychometric instruments designed to evaluate evaluative attitudes toward the self across developmental, educational, clinical, and occupational contexts. Developed by Stanley Coopersmith between 1959 and 1967, the inventory conceptualizes self-esteem as an enduring, multidimensional affective-cognitive construct reflecting an individual’s subjective appraisal of their personal worthiness, competence, and significance. The standard instrument consists of the School Form (58 items), designed for children and adolescents aged 8 through 15, alongside widely utilized derivative formats including the 25-item Adult Form (often applied to individuals aged 16 and older) and a 25-item Short Form. The School Form encompasses four primary substantive subscales—General Self (26 items), Social Self-Peers (8 items), Home-Parents (8 items), and School-Academic (8 items)—complemented by an eight-item Lie Scale designed to detect defensiveness, social desirability bias, and unrealistic self-enhancement. Administered utilizing a dichotomous forced-choice format (“Like Me” versus “Unlike Me”), the total self-esteem score is traditionally computed by multiplying the sum of endorsed self-esteem items by two, yielding a standardized composite score ranging from 0 to 100.

Across decades of psychometric inquiry, the CSEI has demonstrated robust psychometric properties. Internal consistency estimates across community and educational cohorts routinely yield Cronbach’s alpha coefficients ranging from .80 to .92 for the total scale, with subscale reliabilities generally spanning .65 to .85 depending on sample heterogeneity and developmental stage. Test-retest reliability coefficients demonstrate notable temporal stability, ranging from .70 to .88 across intervals varying from five weeks to three years. Extensive validity studies confirm significant convergent validity with concurrent instruments, such as the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES) and the Piers-Harris Children’s Self-Concept Scale, as well as divergent validity against measures of depressive symptomatology, trait anxiety, and behavioral maladjustment. Factor analytic research, pioneered by Barbara Kokenes and corroborated by modern structural equation modeling, substantiates a hierarchical multidimensional architecture wherein a dominant general self-evaluative factor subsumes distinct domain-specific perceptions of competence and interpersonal relational security.

Keywords

Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory, CSEI, self-esteem, self-concept, psychometrics, psychological assessment, adolescent development, emotional well-being, social desirability, factor analysis

Authors

The Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory was conceived, formulated, and empirically validated by Stanley Coopersmith (1926–1979). Coopersmith was an American psychologist and prominent developmental and social psychology scholar who served as an Associate Professor and Department Chair of Psychology at the University of California, Davis. Coopersmith dedicated the majority of his academic career to deciphering the etiology, structural mechanics, developmental trajectories, and behavioral consequences of self-evaluation in children and emerging adults. His seminal monograph, The Antecedents of Self-Esteem, published in 1967 by W. H. Freeman and Company, established an enduring paradigm for investigating how parenting styles, family dynamics, societal structures, and individual competence converge to produce distinct self-evaluative frameworks.

Following Coopersmith’s premature passing, psychometricians and developmental researchers continued the empirical refinement and standardization of his inventories. Key developmental extensions and adult adaptations were subsequently advanced by scholars such as Muriel B. Ryden (1978), who demonstrated the temporal stability and discriminant properties of an adult adaptation, and Barbara Kokenes (1974, 1978), who conducted foundational factor analytic investigations confirming the multidimensional subscale architecture of the school instrument across diverse educational strata. The instrument has since been translated, adapted, and standardized across numerous international languages and socio-cultural populations.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory is to provide a standardized, objective, and psychometrically sound quantification of an individual’s subjective appraisal of personal worth, self-efficacy, emotional resilience, and socio-environmental integration. Coopersmith operationalized self-esteem not merely as an abstract intrapsychic state, but as a relatively stable affective-cognitive disposition that shapes how individuals perceive environmental stressors, engage in interpersonal interactions, perform in academic and vocational settings, and conceptualize their capacity to navigate everyday existential challenges.

Theoretical Rationale and Developmental Applications

Historically, psychological measurement tools in the mid-twentieth century struggled to differentiate between conscious self-acceptance and overt social conformity or defensive self-inflation. Coopersmith recognized that children, when responding to direct questioning about their competence or personal happiness, often exhibited varying degrees of social desirability distortion or defensiveness. Consequently, the CSEI was designed to balance explicit statements of personal efficacy with contextualized inquiries into interpersonal interactions (family and peers) and academic or occupational functionality. By embedding a dedicated Lie Scale within the 58-item School Form, the instrument offers practitioners and researchers a built-in diagnostic metric to gauge whether a participant’s high self-regard reflects authentic personal security or a defensive posture characterized by perfectionism and social acquiescence.

In educational and developmental psychology, the CSEI serves as a vital diagnostic and screening apparatus. It enables school psychologists, educational diagnosticians, and pediatric clinicians to identify students experiencing severe self-derogation, chronic feelings of inadequacy, or generalized emotional helplessness. Because low self-esteem is extensively linked to academic underachievement, school absenteeism, behavioral delinquency, social alienation, and adolescent mood disorders, the inventory provides actionable data that can inform tailored educational interventions, counseling curricula, and social-emotional learning programs.

Clinical, Occupational, and Research Scope

Within clinical psychology, the inventory is widely deployed in intake batteries, treatment planning, and longitudinal outcome monitoring. Clinicians utilize the multidimensional profile generated by the subscales to pinpoint specific domains of perceived deficit. For instance, an adolescent might exhibit robust academic self-concept alongside profoundly compromised home-parental self-evaluation, suggesting that systemic family dysfunction rather than general cognitive helplessness is driving their distress. Furthermore, tracking pre- and post-intervention scores allows psychotherapists—particularly those practicing cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), client-centered therapy, or family systems therapy—to empirically quantify structural shifts in self-efficacy and self-acceptance.

In adult psychiatric and organizational research, adult adaptations of the CSEI provide insights into workplace stress, occupational burnout, leadership efficacy, and coping styles. Researchers consistently utilize the CSEI to investigate the mediating role of self-worth in buffering against somatic illnesses, interpersonal trauma, and vocational dissatisfaction. The instrument’s dual availability as a comprehensive 58-item school inventory and an abbreviated 25-item short/adult form ensures operational versatility across high-volume epidemiological surveys, tightly controlled clinical trials, and detailed idiographic case evaluations.

Psychological Construct

The psychological construct evaluated by the Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory is self-esteem, defined by Coopersmith (1967) as the evaluation an individual makes and customarily maintains with regard to themselves: it expresses an attitude of approval or disapproval, and indicates the extent to which the individual believes themselves to be capable, significant, successful, and worthy. According to Coopersmith, self-esteem constitutes a subjective, multidimensional judgment of personal value that is expressed through behavioral patterns, affective displays, and verbal self-reports.

Multidimensional Subscale Structure

Unlike purely unidimensional instruments that treat self-esteem as a single global index, the Coopersmith inventory evaluates both generalized self-worth and context-specific evaluations across three vital life ecosystems. The 58-item School Form is explicitly parsed into four content-specific subscales and one methodological control index:

• General Self (26 items): This subscale taps into the respondent’s overarching sense of identity, self-assurance, resilience, somatic acceptance, and baseline emotional tone. It assesses feelings of self-confidence (“I’m pretty sure of myself”), fundamental emotional equilibrium (“Things usually don’t bother me”), and self-directed negativity or helplessness (“I often feel ashamed of myself”; “I’m a failure”). High scores on this subscale reflect robust emotional fortitude, positive self-regard, and an internal locus of control.
• Social Self-Peers (8 items): This dimension measures the individual’s perception of their popularity, social attractiveness, ease of making friends, and sense of belonging among peers. It captures interpersonal comfort and social competence (“I’m popular with people my own age”; “I’m a lot of fun to be with”) alongside feelings of social ostracism or rejection (“Most people are better liked than I am”; “People pick on me very often”). This subscale is critical during childhood and adolescence, when peer validation serves as a primary developmental mirror.
• Home-Parents (8 items): This domain captures the individual’s subjective evaluation of their familial relationships, perceived parental respect, and domestic emotional safety. Items assess whether the individual feels loved, understood, and emotionally validated by caregivers (“My family understands me”; “My family usually considers my feelings”) or conversely, whether they experience familial alienation, unrealistic parental demands, or domestic turmoil (“My family expects too much of me”; “No one pays much attention to me at home”).
• School-Academic / Work (8 items): Designed to assess competence within structured achievement environments, this subscale captures the individual’s self-efficacy regarding schoolwork, intellectual capability, and responsiveness to instructional demands (“I’m proud of my work”; “I’m doing the best work that I can”). It also evaluates academic distress, feelings of intellectual inadequacy, and perceived institutional friction (“I’m not doing as well at work as I’d like to”; “My employer or supervisor makes me feel I’m not good enough”).
• Lie Scale / Defensiveness (8 items): In addition to the four substantive dimensions, the CSEI incorporates an 8-item validity scale derived from psychometric principles established in inventories such as the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI). These items state universally improbable virtues or behavioral perfection (“I never worry about anything”; “I always tell the truth”; “I like everyone I know”). Endorsement of these items reflects high social desirability, lack of self-insight, or an effort to present a facade of absolute emotional and moral flawlessness.

Genuine Versus Defensive Self-Esteem

A critical contribution of Coopersmith’s construct operationalization is the conceptual distinction between authentic (genuine) high self-esteem and defensive (compensatory) self-esteem. Individuals possessing genuine high self-esteem exhibit high scores across the substantive dimensions accompanied by low scores on the Lie Scale (typically 0 to 2 endorsements). These individuals demonstrate accurate self-knowledge, can candidly acknowledge subjective weaknesses, and maintain self-regard that is resilient against negative feedback. Conversely, individuals who endorse substantive self-esteem statements alongside elevated Lie Scale scores (e.g., 3 or higher) demonstrate defensive self-esteem—a fragile psychological posture where superficial grandiosity or denial masks profound underlying vulnerability and anxiety.

Theoretical Framework

The Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory is grounded in the theoretical framework articulated in Stanley Coopersmith’s 1967 landmark work, The Antecedents of Self-Esteem. Coopersmith’s model synthesizes classic psychoanalytic insights, the phenomenological humanism of Carl Rogers, the symbolic interactionism of George Herbert Mead and Charles Horton Cooley, and the foundational pragmatic philosophy of William James.

The Four Foundational Bases of Self-Esteem

Coopersmith postulated that self-esteem is not an arbitrary affective baseline, but an empirical deduction derived from an individual’s evaluation of their life experiences against four primary evaluative criteria:

1. Significance: The extent to which an individual feels loved, accepted, cherished, and affirmed by primary attachment figures and significant others. Significance is fostered through warm, attentive, and approving interpersonal relationships.
2. Competence: The successful performance of tasks and demands deemed socially, intellectually, or physically meaningful. Fulfilling developmental milestones and experiencing mastery establishes a baseline belief in one’s personal efficacy.
3. Virtue: Adherence to internal moral, ethical, and religious standards. When an individual perceives that their conduct aligns with culturally reinforced ethical ideals, they maintain a positive sense of moral self-worth.
4. Power: The ability to control, influence, and determine one’s environment, make autonomous choices, and withstand coercive social pressures. Individuals who perceive themselves as possessing an internal locus of control cultivate elevated self-determination.

According to Coopersmith, an individual continually processes internal and external feedback across these four dimensions, weighting each domain based on personal values and developmental context. If an individual places high personal importance on academic competence but experiences chronic academic failure, their overall self-esteem will suffer far more severely than that of an individual who prioritizes social significance over academic performance.

Antecedents: The Critical Role of Caregiver Dynamics

Coopersmith’s theoretical paradigm is intimately bound to the environmental antecedents that shape self-evaluative structures during childhood. Based on his multi-method longitudinal study of preadolescent boys and their mothers, Coopersmith delineated three major conditions within family systems that consistently fostered high self-esteem:

• Unconditional Acceptance and Warmth: Parents of children with high self-esteem exhibited deep genuine affection, emotional availability, and unconditional validation. The child was treated as a significant individual whose opinions, emotional states, and presence were inherently valuable.
• Clearly Defined and Enforced Limits: Paradoxically, high self-esteem was not nurtured through permissive parenting, but rather through structured environments with clear, realistic, and consistent behavioral rules. Clearly articulated limits provided children with a predictable cognitive map of acceptable behavior, which reduced existential anxiety and fostered emotional security.
• Respect for Latitude Within Defined Limits: Within the boundaries established by parental guidelines, parents of high-esteem children granted extensive autonomy, encouraged independent decision-making, and treated the child’s preferences with high democratic respect. This combination of structural limits and internal freedom facilitated the development of personal agency and self-reliance.

Validity

The psychometric validity of the Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory has been evaluated across hundreds of empirical investigations over six decades, providing comprehensive evidence supporting its construct, concurrent, convergent, discriminant, and predictive utility.

Construct and Factorial Validity

Construct validity evaluates whether an instrument effectively measures the theoretical construct it purports to capture. Initial construct validity was established by Coopersmith (1959, 1967) through extensive multi-trait multi-method approaches involving clinical interviews, behavioral observations by teachers and clinicians (Behavior Rating Form), and thematic apperception protocols. The correlations between self-reported CSEI scores and objective observational ratings of assertive, self-assured behavior ranged between .33 and .45, confirming that internal self-esteem systematically reflects outward behavioral manifestations.

Further structural validation was achieved through large-scale factor analytic investigations. Barbara Kokenes (1974, 1978) administered the CSEI to over 1,500 public school students across grades 4 through 8 to empirically examine whether Coopersmith’s proposed theoretical dimensions held statistical independence. Her investigations validated the construct validity of the four subscales, showing that while items clustered strongly along the hypothesized domains of Home-Parents, Social-Peers, and School-Academic, they simultaneously loaded onto a robust higher-order General Self construct.

Convergent and Discriminant Validity

Convergent validity has been repeatedly verified via strong, statistically significant correlations with alternative, psychometrically validated measures of self-evaluation and psychological functioning:

• Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES): Empirical correlations between the CSEI total score and the unidimensional RSES typically range from r = .55 to r = .72 across adolescent and adult cohorts, reflecting strong construct convergence while illustrating the unique multidimensional variance captured by Coopersmith’s ecological subscales.
• Piers-Harris Children’s Self-Concept Scale: Studies evaluating youth populations demonstrate robust correlations between the CSEI and the Piers-Harris total score (ranging from r = .60 to r = .78), with specific convergent alignment observed between the respective peer and academic subscales.
• Tennessee Self-Concept Scale (TSCS): Comparative studies yield convergent coefficients averaging .60, further verifying instrument convergence across disparate psychometric formats.

Discriminant validity is evidenced by moderate to strong negative correlations with psychopathological symptom inventories. Scores on the CSEI consistently demonstrate significant inverse correlations with measures of depression, including the Children’s Depression Inventory (CDI; r = -.52 to -.68) and the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI; r = -.48 to -.65). Similarly, the CSEI correlates inversely with measures of trait anxiety, such as the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory for Children (STAIC; r = -.45 to -.60), and dimensions of externalizing hostility, social withdrawal, and neuroticism.

Predictive and Criterion Validity

In educational contexts, the School-Academic subscale demonstrates meaningful predictive utility regarding standardized achievement test performance, grade point averages (GPA), and classroom engagement, with longitudinal studies demonstrating that positive academic self-esteem prospectively predicts academic persistence even after controlling for baseline IQ. In clinical research, low baseline CSEI scores prospectively predict vulnerability to adolescent depressive episodes, substance experimentation, and treatment dropout in therapeutic programs.

Reliability

The reliability of the Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory has been documented across normative cohorts, clinical populations, and diverse cross-cultural settings, demonstrating strong internal consistency and high temporal stability.

Internal Consistency

The internal consistency of the 58-item School Form and the 25-item Adult/Short Forms has been verified through split-half reliability formulas, Kuder-Richardson Formula 20 (KR-20), and Cronbach’s alpha:

• Total Scale: Across normative school-aged samples, internal consistency coefficients for the total 50 substantive items consistently range from .80 to .92. Stanley Coopersmith (1967) reported an initial split-half reliability coefficient of .88 on a normative sample of 5th and 6th-grade students. Subsequent investigations by Spatz and Johnston (1973) evaluating over 600 students across grades 5, 9, and 12 yielded internal consistency coefficients (KR-20) ranging from .80 to .86.
• Subscale Reliabilities: Because the subscales comprise fewer items, their individual alpha coefficients are naturally lower but remain psychometrically acceptable. Typical coefficients reported across developmental literature are: General Self (26 items): .78 to .85; Social Self-Peers (8 items): .65 to .75; Home-Parents (8 items): .70 to .80; School-Academic (8 items): .62 to .74.
• Short and Adult Forms (25 items): Muriel Ryden (1978) evaluated the adult version of the CSEI and documented an internal consistency alpha coefficient of .81, confirming that the brief format retains high scale homogeneity.

Test-Retest Stability

Temporal stability assessments demonstrate that the CSEI captures an enduring psychological disposition rather than transient, state-dependent mood fluctuations:

• Coopersmith (1967) documented a test-retest reliability coefficient of r = .88 over a five-week interval with a sample of 30 fifth-grade pupils, and an impressive stability coefficient of r = .70 across an extensive three-year longitudinal interval.
• Drummond, McIntire, and Ryan (1977) investigated test-retest reliability among elementary school students over a one-year interval, demonstrating stability coefficients ranging from .64 to .73.
• In adult populations, Ryden (1978) reported a test-retest correlation coefficient of r = .80 across a six-week duration, demonstrating that self-evaluative structures in adulthood maintain marked psychometric stability.

Factor Analysis

The factor structure of the Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory has been the subject of extensive empirical scrutiny, serving as a primary testing ground for debates regarding the unidimensionality versus multidimensionality of human self-concept.

Pioneering Exploratory Factor Analyses

The earliest definitive factor analytic study was conducted by Barbara Kokenes (1974, 1978), who subjected the 58-item School Form to an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) with orthogonal (Varimax) and oblique rotations across a diverse sample of 1,513 children in grades 4 through 8. Kokenes sought to determine whether empirical data supported Coopersmith’s intuitively and theoretically derived subscales. The EFA extracted four major factors that closely aligned with Coopersmith’s conceptual schema:

1. Factor I (General Self-Esteem): Characterized by high loadings from items capturing baseline self-confidence, emotional stability, self-regard, and freedom from pervasive anxiety.
2. Factor II (Home-Parents): Defined by strong loadings on items assessing parent-child rapport, feeling valued at home, and the absence of domestic distress.
3. Factor III (Social-Peers): Composed of items loading on peer acceptance, interpersonal popularity, and ease of communication in group settings.
4. Factor IV (School-Academic): Defined by items reflecting feelings of adequacy, competence, and performance satisfaction in the classroom.

Kokenes concluded that the subscales maintained empirical integrity across both developmental levels and gender, validating the inventory’s multidimensional architecture.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis and Structural Models

Subsequent psychometricians utilized confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to compare alternative structural models: a strictly unidimensional one-factor model, an oblique four-factor model, and a hierarchical bifactor model.

In structural modeling evaluations (e.g., Edgar et al., 2002; Donaldson, 1974), the strictly unidimensional model routinely yields poor fit indices (e.g., Comparative Fit Index [CFI] < .80; Root Mean Square Error of Approximation [RMSEA] > .08). In contrast, a hierarchical model featuring four first-order domain factors (General, Social, Home, Academic) loading onto a single higher-order global self-esteem construct achieves acceptable to good fit indices (CFI > .90; RMSEA < .05; SRMR < .06). This hierarchical architecture provides empirical justification for both computing a composite Total Self-Esteem score and reporting differentiated profile scores across the four substantive subscales.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Inventory Type: Standardized self-report psychometric rating inventory measuring evaluative self-attitudes, self-worth, and perceived competence.
• Target Populations:
  • School Form (58 Items): Children and adolescents aged 8 through 15 years (grades 3 to 10).
  • Adult Form (25 Items): Adolescents aged 16 and older, college students, and adult populations.
  • Short Form (25 Items): Rapid screening across youth and community samples where administration time is constrained.
• Item Count & Structure (School Form): Total of 58 items, partitioned into:
  • General Self Subscale: 26 items
  • Social Self-Peers Subscale: 8 items
  • Home-Parents Subscale: 8 items
  • School-Academic Subscale: 8 items
  • Lie (Defensiveness) Scale: 8 items
• Response Format: Forced-choice dichotomous format with two response options:
  • “Like Me” (the statement accurately describes the respondent)
  • “Unlike Me” (the statement does not describe the respondent)
• Scoring and Quantification Rules:
  • Substantive Self-Esteem Scoring: Items are scored 1 point for answers indicative of positive self-esteem and 0 points for negative self-esteem.
    • “Like Me” indicates High Self-Esteem on 19 items: 2, 4, 5, 10, 11, 14, 18, 19, 21, 23, 24, 28, 29, 32, 36, 45, 47, 55, 57.
    • “Unlike Me” indicates High Self-Esteem on 31 items: 3, 7, 8, 9, 12, 15, 16, 17, 22, 25, 26, 30, 31, 33, 35, 37, 38, 39, 40, 42, 43, 44, 46, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 56, 58.
  • Total Score Calculation: The sum of points across the 50 substantive items (maximum raw score = 50) is multiplied by 2 to yield a standardized composite score on a scale ranging from 0 to 100. Higher scores represent higher self-esteem.
  • Lie Scale Scoring: Items 1, 6, 13, 20, 27, 34, 41, and 48 evaluate defensiveness and social desirability. Each “Like Me” endorsement earns 1 point (range: 0 to 8). Endorsement of 3 or more Lie items indicates excessive defensiveness, unrealistically positive self-presentation, or social acquiescence. Protocols exceeding this threshold are typically flagged as psychometrically suspect or excluded from scientific analyses.
• Administration Time: Approximately 10 to 15 minutes for the 58-item School Form; 5 to 7 minutes for the 25-item Adult or Short Form.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory was first described in scholarly literature by Stanley Coopersmith in 1959 within the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology and published in its comprehensive validated form in his 1967 monograph, The Antecedents of Self-Esteem. In 1981, Consulting Psychologists Press (CPP) published the standardized commercial manuals and test booklets.

Currently, the commercial rights and licensing for standardized, published test materials of the Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory are managed by Mind Garden, Inc. Under commercial guidelines, physical test kits, scoring keys, and formal diagnostic manuals incur purchase and licensing fees for clinical, corporate, and formal diagnostic implementations. However, for academic research, non-commercial dissertations, and scientific investigations, the CSEI item pool has historically been published across numerous academic journals, public research archives, and educational repositories. Researchers seeking to utilize the scale for non-commercial academic research may often obtain scholarly fair-use permissions or purchase student research licenses directly from the commercial publisher.

References

• Coopersmith, S. (1959). A method for determining types of self-esteem. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 59(1), 87–94. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0048001
• Coopersmith, S. (1967). The antecedents of self-esteem. W. H. Freeman & Co.
• Coopersmith, S. (1981). Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventories: Manual. Consulting Psychologists Press.
• Donaldson, T. S. (1974). Affective domain measurement: Problems and prospects. Evaluation Comment, 4(4), 1–4.
• Drummond, R. J., McIntire, W. G., & Ryan, C. W. (1977). Stability and structure of self-esteem in grade school children. Psychological Reports, 40(3), 1205–1206. https://doi.org/10.2466/pr0.1977.40.3c.1205
• Edgar, M. A., Robinson, D. L., & Parker, W. D. (2002). Factor structure of the Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory among academically talented youth. Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment, 20(3), 256–267. https://doi.org/10.1177/073428290202000304
• Kimball, O. M. (1973). Development of norms for the Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory: Grades four through eight (Doctoral dissertation, Northern Illinois University). Dissertation Abstracts International, 34, 1131A–1132A.
• Kokenes, B. (1974). Grade level differences in factors of self-esteem. Developmental Psychology, 10(6), 954–958. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0037248
• Kokenes, B. (1978). A factor analytic study of the Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory. Adolescence, 13(49), 149–155.
• Ryden, M. B. (1978). An adult version of the Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory: Test-retest reliability and social desirability. Psychological Reports, 43(3_suppl), 1189–1190. https://doi.org/10.2466/pr0.1978.43.3f.1189
• Spatz, K. C., & Johnston, J. O. (1973). Internal consistency of the Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 33(4), 875–876. https://doi.org/10.1177/001316447303300414

13. Items of the Scale (Questionnaire)