Psychometric properties of the Chinese version of State Self-Esteem Scale: an analysis of data from a cross-sectional survey of patients in the first four months after stroke

Aim. To establish the psychometric properties of the Chinese version of the State Self-Esteem Scale in stroke patients. Background. Self-esteem is seen to enhance peoples ability to cope with disease: low self-esteem may inhibit participation in rehabilitation and thus result in poor health and social outcomes. Although the Chinese version of the State Self-Esteem Scale has been used as an outcome measure for stroke rehabilitation, no study has examined its factor structure in this patient group. Design. A cross-sectional design. Methods. A convenience sample of 265 Chinese stroke patients (mean age 71.4, SD 10.3 years), with a minimum score of 18 out of a possible 30 for the Mini Mental State Exam recruited from two regional rehabilitation hospitals in Hong Kong. An exploratory factor analysis and an internal consistency analysis of the State Self-Esteem Scale were conducted. Pearsons correlation coefficients were calculated between the State Self-Esteem Scale and the Geriatric Depression Scale to determine convergent validity. Results. The final factor solution comprised a three-factor model with correlated constructs and accounted for 49.5% of the total variance. Significant negative correlations were found between the Geriatric Depression Scale and the State Self-Esteem Scale subscale scores (r-0.31 to -0.55, p < 0.01), indicating that the State Self-Esteem Scale had acceptable convergent validity. The new three-factor structure had higher Cronbachs alphas when compared with the original three-factor structure. Relevance to clinical practice. The State Self-Esteem Scale appears to be a useful measure for assessing state self-esteem in stroke patients. To establish the concurrent, discriminative and construct validities, the factor structure of the SSES could be further developed and tested.