Translation of the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale: From English to American Sign Language

Abstract

In general, social science researchers agree that there is a need for culturally and linguistically appropriate instruments if findings are to reflect what they are intended to measure. This study examines if the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES) can be translated into American Sign Language, yield an instrument with internal consistency of .80, and produce an instrument with one underlying construct as was originally designed. The was translated into American Sign Language using the backtranslation method and an expert panel of raters to examine conceptual equivalence. Once conceptual equivalence was agreed upon by the raters, the instrument was given to participants. There were 185 participants in this study, after those with missing data were excluded. Results suggested that the translated version yielded an internal consistency of .7838, which is comparable to other studies involving translated versions of the RSES. The principal components analysis revealed three underlying components, labeled competence, negative self-evaluation, and positive self-evaluation, that accounted for 55.58% of the variance in the set of components. This finding is inconsistent with other studies. Discussion of these findings suggests that translation error is unlikely given the protocol for the backtranslation. A more likely source for this finding may be that the construct of self-esteem in deaf individuals may be multi-dimensional. Further research is indicated to examine the concept of self-esteem in deaf persons.