APPENDIX H

BATTLE SELF ESTEEM INVENTORY

         The following is the Preface to the Battle Self-Esteem Inventory. Each student in the Project Adventure Elective inclusion class is given a pretest in the fall and a posttest in the late spring. The results are recorded and compared to measure possible increases in self-esteem while in the Project Adventure Program.

Preface

         For more than 13 years I have worked as a school psychologist and a teacher of learning disabled children. During this period it became quite apparent to me that we (educators) have been basically ineffective in our attempts to assist children and youth with learning problems to develop their potential. Thus, six years ago, I conducted an extensive review of the literature in an attempt to determine why educators have frequently been ineffective in their attempts to serve the educational needs of developing children and youth. In my review of relevant literature, I discovered that many educational procedures and programs of remediation have been developed and implemented over the years, but that these techniques and programs of remediation have, generally speaking, not significantly modified the achievement patterns of children and youth with learning problems. It became apparent to me that merely emphasizing cognitive development was not enough. Rather, it became clear that, in order to assist pupils in developing their potential to the fullest, we must attend to both cognitive and affective student needs.

         Having discovered this, my next objective was to discover ways or means of assessing the affective domain of students. Review of the literature revealed that there were only a few tests intended to measure self-esteem and that, among those that were available, some were questionable. The extent of this problem was clearly delineated by Ruth Wylie (1961) in her extensive review of research dealing with the issue of self-regard. Wylie concluded from her study that researchers who study the phenomenal self tend to employ instruments that are questionable. Moreover, reliability estimates of the instrument being used are rarely provided; and when reliability estimates are presented, they are usually of the split-half interjudge variety, and rarely provide an indication of test-retest reliability.

         Thus, I decided to develop a series of valid, reliable instruments that would be of benefit to diagnosticians and educators in their attempts to assist developing children and youth. I conducted more than 30 studies over a six-year period, which resulted in the development and standardization of the self-esteem inventories described in this manual: scales that psychologists, educators, and researchers have found to be both valid and reliable measures of self-esteem. The instruments are also effective measures of change as a result of interventive procedures.

                                                                                 James Battle

                                                                                 Bureau of Child Study

                                                                                 Edmunton Public Schools

                                                                                 December 1980