Measurement of adolescent self-esteem: French-Canadian version of Harter's self-perception profile for adolescents

The purpose of this study was to verify the psychometric equivalence of a French-Canadian version of the Self-Perception Profile for Adolescents developed by Harter (1988). This instruments measures global self-esteem in adolescents as well as their perceptions of competence in eight other different domains. The instrument was first administered to 731 7th, 9th, and 11th grade students. Four weeks later, 594 of these students were invited to answer the questionnaire once more. Results confirm that the factorial structure and the internal consistency of each domain of the translated version correspond to those of the original version. A test-retest procedure also revealed the temporal stability of the translated version. Regarding the mean scores for each domain and their interrelations with each other and particularly with global self-esteem, similar results to those reported by Harter were obtained with the translated version. This reinforces the conclusion about the psychometric equivalence of the translated version.