Whether self-esteem is a unidimensi

Whether self-esteem is a unidimensional or bidimensional construct has implications for its application in some Asian cultures where it is not socially desirable to boast about oneself, but modesty, and even selfcriticism, is viewed as a virtue. In these cultures scores on the liking the self and not liking the self subscales may have different meanings than they do in the West. In one study the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale was translated into 28 languages and administered it to 16,998 participants across 53 nations. The results showed that positively and negatively worded items were correlated within cultures but the differences between averages of
positive and negative items were smaller in developed nations. The researchers concluded that direct crosscultural comparisons using the Rosenberg Self-Esteem scale may have limited value because negatively worded items can be interpreted differently across cultures.
It has been hypothesized that self-esteem would reveal a different structure in cultures on the collectivist/individualistic continuum. To examine the cross-cultural Self-esteem S875 validity on the Rosenberg self-esteem scale, researchers administered the Scale to 11th grade students in four countries—the U.S., the Czech Republic, China, and Korea. The U.S. and the Czech Republic were selected to represent the more individualistic societies and Korea and China the more collectivist societies, based on a study rank-ordering 68 countries on collectivism versus individualism.