Important Topic
Self-efficacy is a belief that an individual can execute the behaviors required to achieve specific performance goals (Bandura 1977, 1986, 1997). Self-efficacy is confidence in one's ability to control one's motivation, behavior and social environment. Cognitive self-evaluations have a profound impact on all aspects of human experience. They influence everything, from the goals people set, how much energy they expend to achieve them, and the likelihood that they will be successful in achieving particular behavioral levels. Self-efficacy beliefs, unlike traditional stress psychological constructs are hypothesized not to be consistent with the context and domain of behavior.
The Self-Efficacy Theory (SET), has had a significant impact on education, research, and clinical practice. For example, self-efficacy can be applied to a variety of behaviors in the field of psychology.
Self-management for chronic diseases
Smoking cessation
Alcohol use
Food
Pain management
Exercise
senses of coherence, and other popular constructs. These health-related domains are influenced by self-efficacy theory and have encouraged its use for research into HIV prevention.
Lessons From Hiv/Aids
HIV research has shown us that it is difficult to measure self-efficacy accurately and reliably. In order to measure self-efficacy for safer behaviors, instruments often include constructs that are not self-efficacy. For example, investigators used content that reflected HIV-related knowledge, behavior intentions, attitudes towards safer sex, perceptions about the difficulty in enacting risk reducing behaviour, perceptions and feelings of helplessness, perceived vulnerability, acceptance of sexuality, or other unique operationalization (Forsyth & Carey 1998). Improper operationalization of self efficacy beliefs can obscure what is being measured and reduce bivariate relationships.
HIV research has also highlighted the limitations of evidence supporting the validity and efficacy of self-efficacy measures. Brafford (1991) and Beck (1991), presented discriminative evidence to support the validity of Condom Use Self-Efficacy Scales (CUSES). They demonstrated that scores differ:
Consistent, inconsistent, or non-condom users
Participants who are sexually experienced but inexperienced;
Participants who reported or didn't report a history sexually transmitted disease infection.
HIV research reminds us, too, that it is crucial to have a clear conceptual understanding of the nature of efficacy beliefs in order to develop measures that conform with SET. It is important that items used to evaluate efficacy beliefs are operationalized in order to:
Assess beliefs in the ability to
Enact domain-specific behavior in
Situations that pose gradations or challenge
Despite the fact that HIV prevention studies are not always accurate, there are notable exceptions. Basen-Engquist (1992) has a multi-item measure that assesses creative self-efficacy in negotiating safer sex. This measure measures students' beliefs about their ability to reduce risk behavior. For example, they can initiate a discussion about condom use. It also assesses whether or not they are comfortable discussing safer sex with new partners before having intercourse. The elicitation-based scenario approach was used to give details about the situational demands that might influence efficacy beliefs. This is another contribution to HIV research and health-behavior research in general.
HIV research has shown that method so logical issues can also affect self-efficacy--behavior relationships. Ceiling effects, response bias and measurement error in self-report measures are possible factors that can influence self-efficacy risk reduction (Weinhardt, et al. 1998). In HIV prevention research, a consistent finding is that self-efficacy scores are negatively biased. Respondents often respond to questions about their perceived abilities by stating that they are highly capable of implementing risk-reducing behavior. This may result in censored distributions, where a significant portion of the sample has highest self-efficacy scores. These ceiling effects could be explained by the fact that efficacy measures don't provide enough challenge for the target sample (Bandura 1997). Without contextual cues, responses could reflect performance in the "best case" scenario that results in maximum self-efficacy scores. These responses may mask real differences among respondents. Truncated data may also result from scoring protocols that limit the possible responses. This can lead to poor predictions about behavioral performance due to a lack of sensitivity for self-efficacy differences. To develop sensitive self-efficacy measures, it is important to include sufficient gradations in the items and sufficient response intervals.
Another explanation for ceiling effects could be that effectiveness scores can be affected by response bias. Research participants might respond in ways that are positive and reflective of themselves. HIV prevention research has adopted traditional psychological assessment. This approach advances a trait conceptualization for social desirability responding. This approach, unlike others, has not shown any relationship between socially desirable bias and efficacy beliefs. (Forsyth et. al. 1997). These findings have one limitation: investigators tried to predict dynamic efficacy beliefs using items that reflect stable personality traits. However, these are not relevant to HIV. Traditional measures of socially desirable responses treat assessment items as indicators of a larger construct. This ignores the fact that HIV-infected behaviors are unique stigmatizing. Incongruencies in the assessment may cause inconsistencies that prevent you from finding significant correlations between self-efficacy and social desirability. Although participants may be able to present HIV-risk behaviors in a socially acceptable manner, they might not have been able to detect trait measures of presentation bias. As risky sexual behavior may not be reported, beliefs such as self-efficacy in risk-reducing behaviors might be over-reported. Research on self-efficacy should pay more attention to the assessment of response bias.
Teaching Strategies
Students can be helped to see the differences between constructs from social-cognitive theories. ).
Encourage students to create a measure for self-efficacy regarding any health-related behavior. This will avoid the confusion between self-efficacy and other constructs. Discuss how social desirability responses biases can increase self-efficacy if the Health Psychology behavior is socially stigmatized, such as sexual behavior or illegal drug use, or if one is expected to engage in a particular behavior (e.g. exercise).
Discuss measurement (e.g. scale construction) as well as statistical (e.g. transformation of data).
Encourage students to create methods to gather evidence to support their self-efficacy measure.
Students will be able to help design an intervention program to improve self-efficacy. They will also need to create a research design that measures changes in self-improvement. This will allow them to determine if these changes have any effect on risky behavior.
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