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

Self-Esteem Research Problems and Issues 61the context of a particular interpretive usage. . . . Very briefly put,validity is a joint property of a measurement or observational technique,an interpretive framework, and a scientific audience. (1976,pp. 155–156)In short, validity involves a process, includes reaching a consensus,and is always a matter of degree. Why should it be different with somethingas complex as self-esteem?ConclusionMuch more could be said about validity and self-esteem research. Forexample, I could talk about the “plausibility” of a theory, which is thetype of credibility that comes when ideas are useful in an applied or practicalsetting, regardless of whether they can be “proven” in the ordinarysense (Wells & Marwell, 1976). However, we are not so much concernedwith explicating the scientific method as with understanding how it can beused to research, understand, and enhance self-esteem. By way of sum,then, four things appear to stand out at this second stop of our journeythrough the field. At this point, we can see that qualitative and quantitativemethods have been applied to the topic for a long time. Next, it isclear that there is a substantial amount of research currently available onthe subject, even though it is diverse in terms of method. Third, the fieldsuffers from a need for some kind of integration or “consensus” (Wells &Marwell, 1976). Finally, it appears as though reaching this goal dependson using a method that is capable of integrating both qualitative and quantitativedata, as doing otherwise is likely to produce an incomplete socialscience of self-esteem. Accordingly, the next step is to examine the majorresearch findings about self-esteem as they occur today. In Chapter 5 wewill attempt to integrate them into our description of its fundamentalstructure.