Multidimensional Adolescent Self-Concepts: Their Relationship to Age, Sex, and Academic Measures

Abstract

The Self Description Questionnaire II (SDQ II) was administered to 901 students (11 to 18 years old) in grades 7 through 12 who attended one public coeducational high school. Factor analysis clearly identified the 11 SDQ II scales, each scale was reliable (median alpha = .86), and correlations among the factors were small (median r = .17). All of the SDQ II scales were significantly correlated with sex and/or age, though the effects of sex and age were small and independent of each other. The direction of the sex effect varied with the particular scale, and was not significant for the sum of all the SDQ II scales. This total score, and most of the separate scales, had a quadratic age effect where self concepts started out high, reached their lowest level in grade 9, and then increased. At every grade level academic criterion measures were significantly correlated with every academic scale, but not with the nonacademic scales. Verbal achievement was most highly correlated with Verbal self-concept, while mathematics achievement was most highly correlated with Math self-concept. These findings not only demonstrate the multidimensionality of self-concept, but also show that its relationship to other constructs cannot be adequately understood if this multidimensionality is ignored. The findings have important implications for the study of adolescent self-concept and support the construct validity of the SDQ II and the Shavelson model on which it is based.