SELF-ESTEEM DURING EMERGING ADULTHOOD Table 1 Intercorrelations Among Study Variables Variable 2 8 10 11 12 13 a status GP ek D change 1006000 Cohen'sd 30 ote GPA grade-point av below the diagonal.Valueson the diagonal in parentheses are apha reliability nts are above th PA is the GPA as xpected Cohen'sds are reported for differences c05. asked to rate how their"self-esteem.self-confidence"has changed autoregressive model to the six assessments.First-order autore schas demonstrad that singl-item a statistical nuisance.first-order autoregressive models take lam,&Jans,201:Robins,Fraley.et al2001). order autoregressive models provide estimate Results of the latent Rank-Order Stability of Self-Esteem first-order autoregressive model that allowed for the estimatio f measu ment error. ixing the urement eror to be equa ank ord Rank-order stability for self-esteem was consistently high,with 3.81 49 4 密密. el of selasked to rate how their “self-esteem, self-confidence” has changed since they entered college. The rating scale ranged from 1 (decreased) to 5 (increased), with the midpoint labeled stayed the same. Past research has demonstrated that single-item measures, such as our measure of perceived self-esteem change, can have adequate reliabil￾ity and validity (Gosling, Rentfrow, & Swann, 2003; Postmes, Has￾lam, & Jans, 2012; Robins, Fraley, et al., 2001). Results Rank-Order Stability of Self-Esteem To examine the rank-order stability of self-esteem during college, we used structural equation modeling to fit a first-order autoregressive model to the six assessments. First-order autore￾gressive models are often used to examine repeated measures data. Whereas traditional OLS methods treat autocorrelation as a statistical nuisance, first-order autoregressive models take into account the dependency of the previous assessment on subsequent assessments so that each assessment is composed of a random error component and the previous assessment. First￾order autoregressive models provide estimates of the latent variable separately from error, allowing for stability estimates that have been corrected for reliability of the measure. We fit a first-order autoregressive model that allowed for the estimation of measurement error, fixing the measurement error to be equal across assessments (see Figure 1 for model and estimates). Rank-order stability for self-esteem was consistently high, with Table 1 Intercorrelations Among Study Variables Variable 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 1. Asiana — 2. Non-Asian minoritya .43
— 3. Femaleb .04 .00 — 4. Socioeconomic status .00 .36
.05 — 5. College GPAc .01 .22
.15 .31
— 6. Expected college GPAd .15
.19
.17
.12
.14 (.87) 7. Self-esteem (Week 1) .12
.01 .10 .11
.05 .11
(.89) .89
.83
.77
.69
.64
8. Self-esteem (Semester 1) .10
.06 .10
.08 .04 .11
.79
(.89) .86
.78
.63
.62
9. Self-esteem (Year 1) .14
.08 .20
.11 .05 .10 .77
.79
(.91) .87
.73
.67
10. Self-esteem (Year 2) .16
.12
.14
.10 .24 .03 .70
.72
.79
(.90) .88
.77
11. Self-esteem (Year 3) .17
.06 .10 .02 .04 .03 .63
.60
.66
.81
(.90) .83
12. Self-esteem (Year 4) .16
.00 .03 .05 .18 .01 .58
.56
.60
.70
.78
(.91) 13. Perceived self-esteem change .06 .05 .12
.02 .07 .02 .06 .13
.18
.18
.36
.32
— M .45 .18 .60 3.52 3.20 3.43 3.81 3.51 3.85 3.90 3.89 3.92 3.81 SD .50 .39 .49 1.00 .49 .30 .75 .63 .79 .79 .76 .74 1.09 Cohen’s de .68 .72 .14 .19 .20 Note. GPA
grade-point average. Raw correlation coefficients are below the diagonal. Values on the diagonal in parentheses are alpha reliability coefficients. Disattenuated coefficients are above the diagonal. a Asian and non-Asian minority variables are dummy coded so that the reference group is European American. b Female is dummy coded so that the reference group is male. c College GPA is the GPA assessment at the end of the fourth year of college. d Expected College GPA is the mean of the three expected GPA variables assessed at Week 1. e Cohen’s ds are reported for differences between adjacent assessments. Cohen’s d between the Week 1 and Year 4 assessment
.16.
p  .05. Figure 1. First-order autoregressive model of self-esteem stability across 4 years of college. Unstandardized estimates are presented in the figure. Standardized stability estimates are presented in parentheses. All estimates are significant at p  .05. The “S” denotes a latent status variable, which is indicated by the corresponding manifest variable (in rectangles). This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. SELF-ESTEEM DURING EMERGING ADULTHOOD 5