Assessing Self-Efficacy Beliefs and Academic Outcomes: The Case for Specificity and Correspondence.

ABSTRACT Guidelines regarding self-efficacy assessment are highlighted in the first section of this paper. In the second section, the is.sue of specificity versus generality of measurement is clarified. And last, preliminary results of a study of eighth graders (n=172) are presented which demonstrate that: (1) the optimal level of specificity of any efficacy assessment depends on the complexity of the performance criteria with which it is compared; and (2) judgments of competence need not be so microscopically operationalized that the assessment loses all sense of practical utility. When a criterial task of interest is relatively broad, such as term grades, self-efficacy judgments can be tailored to these levels and still remain highly predictive. Various forms of self-referent thought measured at various levels of specificity can also prove useful outside the research arena as diagnostic and assessment tools--they can provide teachers and counselors with information regarding students' dispositions, and results may be useful in helping to understand affective influences on performances thaL do not easily lend themselves to microanalytic analysis. Table 1 presents Bandura's guidelines (1986) regarding the specificity and correspondence of self-efficacy and performance assessment. Table 2 presents sample self-efficacy items. A figure presents correlations between different levels of self-efficacy assessment and differing students performance outcomes. (TS)