Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, Vol 53, Issue 2 P96-104, Copyright © 1998 by The Gerontological Society of America
The role of self-perceived usefulness and competence in the self-esteem of elderly adults: confirmatory factor analyses of the Bachman revision of Rosenberg's Self-Esteem Scale
R Ranzijn, J Keeves, M Luszcz and NT Feather
School of Psychology, Flinders University of South Australia, Adelaide. rob.ranzijn@flinders.edu.au
This article reports on a confirmatory analytic study of the Bachman
Revision (1970) of Rosenberg's Self-Esteem Scale (1965) that was used in
the Australian Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ALSA). Participants comprised
1,087 elderly people aged between 70 and 103 years (mean 77 years). Five
competing factor models were tested with LISREL8. The best- fitting model
was a nested one, with a General Self-Esteem second-order factor and two
first-order factors, Positive Self-regard and Usefulness/Competence. This
model was validated with data from a later wave of ALSA. Usefulness and
competence have received little attention in the gerontological literature
to date. Preliminary results indicate that usefulness/competence may be an
important predictor of well-being. Further work is required on the
relationships among usefulness, competence, self-esteem, and well-being in
elderly people.
