Key references:
Martin, A. J., & Debus, R. L. (1999). Alternative factor structure for the Revised Self-Consciousness Scale. Journal of Personality Assessment, 72(2), 266-281
Scheier, M. F., & Carver, C. S. (1985). The Self-Consciousness Scale: A revised version for use with general populations. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 15, 687-699.
Primary use / Purpose:
Background:
Private self-consciousness is a tendency to introspect and examine one's inner self and feelings. Public self-consciousness is an awareness of the self as it is viewed by others. This kind of self-consciousness can result in self-monitoring and social anxiety. Both private and public self-consciousness are viewed as personality traits that are relatively stable over time, but they are not correlated. Just because an individual is high on one dimension doesn't mean that he or she is high on the other. Self-consciousness can strongly influence behaviour. As well as public and private self-consciousness, the Self-Conciousness Scale (SCS-R) measures social anxiety. This revised scale is applicable to more general populations.
Psychometrics:
The Cronbach's alpha for private self-consciousness was found to be .75, for public self-consciousness it was .84, and for social anxiety .79. These alphas compared favorably to those of the original scale. The test-retest correlation for the private subscale was .76, for the public subscale .74, and for the social anxiety subscale .77. These suggest that the scale possesses reasonable stability over time.
