BACKGROUND: The formation and measurement of self-concept were the foci of this research. AIMS: The study aimed to investigate the influence of achievement on academic self-concept and to compare the Perception of Ability Scale for Students (PASS, Boersma & Chapman, 1992) with the Self-Description Questionnaire-1 (SDQ-1, Marsh, 1988). SAMPLE: The participants were 479 grade 5 (mean age 126.6 months) coeducational Australian students, located in 18 schools. METHOD: An intra-class research design was used to investigate the influence of frame-of-reference on self-concept development. RESULTS: As students' academic scores rose above their class mean their self-concepts increased and as students' academic scores fell below their class mean their self-concepts decreased. Students' difference from class mean predicted their self-concept scores. This finding was consistently shown across the reading, spelling, and mathematics domains using test and teaching rating data. A comparison between the PASS and the SDQ-1 demonstrated concurrent validity across self-concept domains. CONCLUSION: The findings support the notions that the social environment is a significant agent that influences self-concept, and that teacher ratings and standardised tests of achievement and the PASS and the SDQ-1 are valid measures for self-concept research.
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Hay et al. (1997) studied this question.