Self-Esteem and Method Effects Associated With Negatively Worded Items: Investigating Factorial Invariance by Sex

The Rosenberg Self-Esteem scale (RSE) has been widely used in examinations of sex differences in global self-esteem. However, previous examinations of sex differences have not accounted for method effects associated with item wording, which have consistently been reported by researchers using the RSE. Accordingly, this study examined the multigroup invariance of global self-esteem and method effects associated with negatively worded items on the RSE between males and females. A correlated traits, correlated methods framework for modeling method effects was combined with a standard multigroup invariance routine using covariance structure analysis. Overall, there were few differences between males and females in terms of the measurement of self-esteem and method effects associated with negatively worded items on the RSE. Our findings suggest that, whereas method effects exist on the RSE scale for both males and females, the method effects associated with negatively worded items do not influence the measurement invariance and mean differences in global self-esteem scores between the sexes.