Self-Esteem Research, Theory, and Practice Toward a Positive ...

44 SELF-ESTEEM RESEARCH, THEORY, AND PRACTICEwork that involves asking parents, teachers, and even peers to evaluate thebehavior of others in terms of self-esteem (Coopersmith, 1967; Harter,1999). Perhaps one of the more important uses of the method is in theclinical setting, where a clinician actually asks the parents and teachers ofchildren about domains where the child is experiencing success or difficulty(Pope, McHale & Craighead, 1988). This method is limited in termsof its ability to tell us about cause and effect or why something happens,but it does offer the important advantage of offering more concrete informationthan previous approaches provide.Correlational MethodMuch of the work on self-esteem involves the use of surveys and testingas ways of gaining access to the phenomenon. Surveys and tests are anespecially attractive way to study self-esteem because once an assessmentinstrument has been developed it can be used to establish correlations inmany types of situations. We use such measures to assess an individual’sself-esteem, for instance, in relation to their behavior, performance,grades, or even personality. We can also set up pre- and post-testing situationsfor measuring self-esteem under experimental conditions or inrelation to therapeutic manipulations. High versus low self-esteem is themost frequent type of comparison made in this regard, but researchershave focused on behavioral correlates of medium and defensive self-esteemas well (Kernis, 2003a).Studying self-esteem by measuring it is important for research andfor theoretical reasons. For example, establishing correlations reducessome of the subjectivity of the research process. Measurements also havepractical value for a clinician or educator in that they can be used totarget areas or behaviors in need of assistance. Furthermore, showing statisticallysignificant links between self-esteem and well-being, performance,mental health, or any number of clinical conditions is also valuable.Unfortunately, this approach is difficult to implement because, as we sawearlier, developing good self-esteem measures means facing some seriousresearch problems. Moreover, even when correlations are found, the oldadage “a correlation does not a cause make” is still at play.Experimental ResearchFinally, we come to the experimental method and the top of the methodologicalpyramid. According to Wells and Marwell (1976), there are twobasic types of experiments used to research self-esteem and both of themusually involve some pre- and post-test measures of self-esteem. The moststraightforward format is to set up an experiment so that subjects are