Susan Harter - US grants

Previous reports focused heavily on the scale construction efforts necessary to devise instruments which would be adequate to test the relationships postulated by the investigators' theoretical model. During the past year we have been involved in studies testing the factorial, concurrent, predictive, and construct validity of four scales. These are: (a) A perceived competence scale for children, which is an alternative to existing measures of self-esteem. This measure provides a profile of a child's perceived competence across three skill domains, cognitive, social, and physical skills, (b) A measure of a child's intrinsic versus extrinsic motivational orientation in the classroom, (c) A measure of children's perceptions of control, in three competence domains, cognitive, social, physical, (d) A measure of children's school concerns and anxieties in four areas, academic performance, peer esteem, teacher acceptance, and school conduct. This year we have focused on the developmental course of each of these constructs as well as their interrelationships. In addition to higher-order factoring, we have begun to test more causal predictions, employing structural equation models. Finally, we have discovered that our measures have great utility to those in more applied fields, and thus have become involved in program evaluation, use of the measures as indivdual diagnostic indicators, as well as other educational and mental health concerns.

The aims are to pursue our programmatic investigation of the developing child's self-esteem. A major focus will be on children's sense of global self-worth. We will be interested in the determinants of self-worth, the processes through which it is conserved and enhanced, as well as the role of self-worth as a mediator of affect and motivation. We are interested in examining these issues from a normative-developmental perspective, as well as from the perspective of individual differences. Our approach to the self-concept focusses on domain-specific evaluations as well as children's overall evaluation of their global self-worth as a person. We will continue to examine our theoretical model which draws upon James (self-esteem equals the ratio of one's successes to one's pretensions ) and Cooley (self-esteem represents the incorporation of the opinions which significant others hold about the self) with regard to the determinants of self-worth. We will extend the application of this model to adolescents, college students, and middle-aged adults. We will also continue to investigate the functional role which self-worth plays in mediating affect (cheerful to depressed) as well as motivation (interest/energy level). The strong relationship between self-worth and affect will be examined in normative populations, as well as among children who have been diagnosed as clinically depressed. We will also develop a behavioral measure of presented self-esteem for young children, who do not have the concept of global self-worth, longitudinally examining the relationship between the two constructs, once the concept emerges. In addition, we will address the issue of the stability of one's concept of self-worth, identifying factors which may make it difficult for children and adolescent to "conserve the self". Major emphasis will be placed on process variables, e.g., the mechanisms through which one comes to protect and enhance the self, e.g., discounting the importance of areas in which one is not competent, taking more responsibility for successes than failures, and seeing one's positive attributes as the core postulates of one's self-theory. We will attempt to address the theoretical, methodological, empirical and applied significance of each of these topics.

DESCRIPTION (APPLICANT'S ABSTRACT): The objective of this program is to train four postdoctoral fellows (three new Ph.D., Level 0 and one Ph.D., Level 1 for a two-year training period) in developmental theory and methodology in order to provide them with the skills necessary to become productive, independent researchers and scholars in the field. We continue to emphasize basic, theoretically driven research; however, we have expanded our focus to include a variety of applied issues and special populations. Four substantive training areas are emphasized: (a) Cognitive and Perceptual Development, (b) Social and Emotional Development, (c) Developmental Psychopathology, and (d) Developmental Cognitive Neuropsychology Within each area, the focus is on developmental processes and how they are manifest at different periods across the life-span. Moreover, there is an emphasis on development in context-, with attention to the familial, cultural, social, and educational contexts in which development occurs. A number of faculty projects address such issues in ethnic minority populations. Twenty core faculty in the Department of Psychology (35% women, 20% minorities) plus several adjunct faculty at the University of Colorado Medical School, serve as potential mentors. Each faculty member has a well-equipped laboratory with ample facilities (e.g., computers, specific equipment, testing and observational rooms) to address his/her particular research questions. Trainees participate in their own postdoctoral seminar, attend several research groups, conduct research with more than one faculty mentor, attend seminars that provide them with greater breadth and depth, and engage in other professional activities, for example, they may serve on dissertation committees, review and prepare grant proposals, teach a course, and receive clinical training to enhance their applied research skills. Trainees are selected from a talented and competitive pool of applicants from high quality graduate programs who have had a strong academic record, displayed research productivity in graduate school, and have the potential to become an independent, productive researcher in an academic, medical, or research setting.