Development and Psychometric Properties of the Scale for Self-Consciousness Assessment

Abstract

This scale development employed Duval and Wicklund's (1972), Carver's (1979), and Zaborowski's (1987) theories on self-consciousness. The aim of the study was to create a new method to assess the self-consciousness construct, in an effort to operationally express self-consciousness, while circumventing existing metric and other impediments. Initially, 38 pilot interviews were conducted with undergraduate psychology students, and two studies followed, one on 494 participants and one on 248 participants. Exploratory factor analysis models, equivalence testing, followed by a third confirmatory factor analysis study on a separate sample of 216 participants, resulted in a final 24-item scale. A four-factor structure of two public and two private self-consciousness dimensions emerged. The Scale for Self-Consciousness Assessment (SSCA) can be of use in various areas of psychological research, possibly in concurrent use with other constructs of interest, due to its theoretical and research importance and its adequate psychometric properties.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Anderson

E. M.

Bohon

L. M.

Berrigan

L. P.

(1996) Factor structure of the Private Self-Consciousness scale. Journal of Personality Assessment, 66, 144–152.

Bernstein

I. H.

Teng

Garbin

C. P.

(1986) A confirmatory factoring of the self-consciousness scale. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 21, 459–475.

Bryant

F. B.

Yarnold

P. R.

(1995) Principal components analysis and exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. In Grimm

L. G.

Yarnold

P. R.

(Eds.), Reading and understanding multivariate statistics. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Burnkrant

R. E.

Page

T. J.

(1984) A modification of the Fenigstein, Scheier, and Buss Self-Consciousness Scales. Journal of Personality Assessment, 48, 629–637.

Buss

A. H.

(1980) Self-consciousness and social anxiety. San Francisco, CA: Freeman.

Carver

C. S.

(1979) A cybernetic model of self attention processes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37, 1251–1281.

Carver

C. S.

Glass

D. C.

(1976) The Self-Consciousness Scale: a discriminant validity study. Journal of Personality Assessment, 40, 169–172.

Carver

C. S.

Scheier

M. F.

(1998) On the self-regulation of behavior. New York: Cambridge Univer. Press.

Chan

D. W.

(1996) Self-consciousness in Chinese college students in Hong Kong. Personality and Individual Differences, 21, 557–562.

10.

Chang

(1988) Factor interpretations of Self-Consciousness Scale. Personality and Individual Differences, 24, 635–640.

11.

Conway

Giannopoulos

(1993) Self-esteem and specificity in self-focused attention. Journal of Social Psychology, 133, 121–123.

12.

Cooley

C. H.

(1907) Social consciousness. The American Journal of Sociology, 12, 675–694.

13.

Cramer

K. M.

(2000) Comparing the relative fit of various factor models of the self-consciousness scale in two independent samples. Journal of Personality Assessment, 75(2), 295–307.

14.

Duval

Wicklund

R. A.

(1972) A theory of objective self-awareness. New York: Academic Press.

15.

Eysenck

H. J.

Eysenck

S. B. G.

(1975) Manual of the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire. London: Hodder and Stoughton.

16.

Fenigstein

(1997) Self-consciousness and its relation to psychological mindedness. In McCallum

Piper

W. E.

(Eds.), Psychological mindeness: a contemporary understanding. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Pp. 105–131.

17.

Fenigstein

Scheier

M. F.

Buss

A. H.

(1975) Public and private self-consciousness: assessment and theory. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 43, 522–527.

18.

Hair

J. F.

Black

W. C.

Babin

B. J.

Anderson

R. E.

(2010) Multivariate data analysis. (7th ed.) Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

19.

Heinemann

(1979) The assessment of private and public self-consciousness: a German replication. European Journal of Social Psychology, 9, 331–337.

20.

Hull

J. G.

Levy

A. S.

(1979) The organizational functions of the self: an alternative to the Duval-Wicklund model of self-awareness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 44, 1097–1109.

21.

Ito

(1998) Consciousness from the viewpoint of the structural-functional relationships of the brain. International Journal of Psychology, 33, 191–197.

22.

James

(1892) The stream of consciousness. First published in Psychology, Chapter XI. Cleveland & New York: World.

23.

Kelley

(1955) The psychology of personal constructs. Vols. 1 & 2. New York: W. W. Norton.

24.

Kelley

(1963) A theory of personality. New York: W. W. Norton.

25.

Kline

(1993) The handbook of psychological testing. London: Routledge.

26.

Lalwani

A. K.

Shrum

L. J.

Chiu

C-Y.

(2009) Motivated response styles: the role of cultural values, regulatory focus, and self-consciousness in socially desirable responding. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96(4), 870–882.

27.

Mead

G. H.

(1914) 1914 class lectures in social psychology. In Miller

D. L.

(Ed.), The individual and the social self. Chicago, IL: Univer. of Chicago Press. Pp. 27–105.

28.

Mittal

Balasubramanian

S. K.

(1987) Testing the dimensionality of the Self-Consciousness Scale. Journal of Personality Assessment, 57, 53–68.

29.

Piliavin

J. A.

Charng

(1988) What is the factorial structure of private and public Self-Consciousness Scales? Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 14, 587–595.

30.

Poortinga

Y. H.

(1989) Equivalence of cross-cultural data: an overview of basic issues. International Journal of Psychology, 24, 737–756.

31.

Poortinga

Y. H.

van de Vijver

F. J. R.

(1987) Explaining cross-cultural differences: bias analysis and beyond. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 18, 259–282.

32.

Reeves

A. L.

Watson

P. J.

Ramsey

Morris

R. J.

(1995) Private self-consciousness factors, need for cognition, and depression. Journal of Social Behavior and Personality, 10, 431–443.

33.

Scheier

M. F.

Carver

C. S.

(1985) The self-consciousness scale: a revised version for use with general populations. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 15, 687–699.

34.

Silvia

P. J.

Gendolla

G. H. E.

(2001) On introspection and self-perception: does self-focused attention enable accurate self-knowledge? Review of General Psychology, 5, 241–269.

35.

Streiner

D. L.

(1994) Figuring out factors: the use and misuse of factor analysis. Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 39, 135–140.

36.

Tabachnick

B. G.

Fidell

L. S.

(2001) Using multivariate statistics. (4th ed.) Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

37.

Van de Vijver

F. J. R.

Leung

(1997) Methods and data analysis for cross-cultural research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

38.

Van de Vijver

F. J. R.

Tanzer

N. K.

(1997) Bias and equivalence in cross-cultural assessment: an overview. European Review of Applied Psychology, 47, 263–279.

39.

Veligekas

Mylonas

(2001) Epaneksetase klimakas aftosinedesias se digma tu hellinikou plethesmou. aftosinedesia ke simvouleftike [Revision of the Self-Consciousness Scale in a Greek sample: self-consciousness and counseling.] [Review of Counselling and Guidance], 56 & 57, 53–71.

40.

Veligekas

Mylonas

Gari

(2001) Revision of the Self-Consciousness Scale: track and field athletes. The 10th World Congress of Sport Psychology Proceedings, Skiathos, May 28–June 2. Pp. 83–85.

41.

Veligekas

Mylonas

Gari

Ploubidis

Mantzavinou

(2003) Assessment of self-consciousness in the Greek population and applications in athletic settings. Collection of articles from The XI European Congress of Sport Psychology, Copenhagen, July 22–27. ISBN 87 89 361 96 2. [CD]

42.

Vygotsky

L. S.

(1925/1999) Consciousness as a problem in the psychology of behavior. New York: Peter Lang Publishing.

43.

Watson

P. J.

Biderman

M. D.

(1993) Narcissistic Personality Inventory factors: splitting and self-consciousness. Journal of Personality Assessment, 61, 41–57.

44.

Wickens

C. J.

Stapel

D. A.

(2008) I versus we: the effects of self-construal level on diversity. Social Cognition, 26, 368–377.

45.

Wickens

C. J.

Stapel

D. A.

(2010) Self-awareness and saliency of social versus individualistic behavioral standards. Social Psychology, 41(1), 10–19.

46.

Wicklund

R. A.

(1975) Objective self-awareness. In Berkowitz

(Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology. Vol. 8. New York: Academic Press. Pp. 233–275.

47.

Zaborowski

(1980) Z pogranicza psychologii spolecznej i psychologii osobowoci [At the interface of social and personality phychology]. Warsaw, Poland: Panstwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe.

48.

Zaborowski

(1987) A theory of internal and external self-consciousness. Polish Psychological Bulletin, 18, 51–61.