Multifaceted self-concept of indigenous Australian secondary students : structure and relations to other academic variables

![CDATA[In response to recent calls for the development of culturally relevant and applicable quantitative instruments for research into the educational disadvantages suffered by Indigenous Australian students, Bodkin-Andrews, Craven & Marsh (2005) analysed the construct-validity of the Self-Description Questionnaire II (short version - SDQII-S) within a strong Indigenous sample. Although their results supported the structure of the 11-factor self-concept model, problems were identified with oppositely worded items within each factor. With this result in mind, this paper also examined secondary students’ response patterns to the SDQII-S, and sort to modify the SDQII-S where necessary. Additionally, what relations the SDQII-S may have held with other influential academic variables (e.g. absenteeism, perceived school instrumentality and future goal efficacy) were examined. The results again demonstrate that the SDQII-S can be a psychometrically sound and robust measure of Indigenous students’ self-concepts, and also hold important relations with other important academic variables.]]