PSPCSA - Pictorial Scale of Perceived Competence and Social Acceptance

PSPCSA - Updated Images

Inclusive images are vital to ensure child-friendly interviews and tasks, especially when assessing children’s self-concepts. One brilliant resource is the Pictorial Scale of Perceived Competence and Social Acceptance (PSPCSA), developed by Harter & Pike, 1984.

This task has many merits and continues to be widely used (e.g., Papadopoulos, 2021), but the separate line drawings for girls and boys don’t reflect the diversity of 21st century communities. This is why Professor Claire Hughes commissioned a talented children’s book illustrator, Karin Eklund, to create a series of gender-neutral ethnically diverse images of children to accompany this task. We are thrilled with the joyful and quirky pictures Karin has created – and delighted that Karin has kindly given us her permission to share them with others involved in not-for-profit research and teaching.

Please do credit the artist, Karin Eklund, if you use her new images in your publications, as her ‘public lending rights’ help supplement her income. For more information about Karin, see https://uk.linkedin.com/in/keklund and https://karineklund.com/. Karin also provided many of the illustrations used on this website.

This artistic commission was made possible by funding from Newnham College, Cambridge and the University of Cambridge Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion Unit.

To read the original paper: The Pictorial Scale of Perceived Competence and Social Acceptance for Young Children on JSTOR