Convergent and Discriminant Validity of Measures: Sources of Self-Esteem in the Classroom

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the convergent and discriminant validity of teacher and student ratings of classroom sources of self-esteem in terms of a formulation offered by William James (1893). Fifteen seventh and eighth grade classes were randomly selected from five junior high schools to complete one of three forms of a student questionnaire while the teachers in each class completed independent ratings. The internal-consistency estimates of student ratings ranged from .72 to .87; non-zero convergent validity values (correlations between independent measures of the same trait) ranged from .20 to .31. These non-zero convergent validity values were higher than correlations between independent measures of different traits (heteromethod values) which may provide some evidence of discriminant validity. Elevations of correlations between repeated measures of different traits (monomethod values) were indicative of shared method variance in both teacher and student ratings. Although non-zero convergent validity values in this study were not large, they compared favorably with those in other studies of self-esteem variables based on independent ratings of the same trait (Wylie, 1974) and similar ratings of different traits (Campbell and Fiske, 1959).

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