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Self-efficacy is the major concept of Bandura's social cognitive theory. Selfefficacy is influenced by four important sources of information: performance accomplishments, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion, and physiological information. Other determinants of self-efficacy are internal personal factors and external environmental factors. The degree of change in self-efficacy is partly a function of the variability and the controllability of its determinants. Level of self-efficacy predicts how people are functioning in terms of choice of behavior, effort expenditure and persistence, thought patterns and emotional reactions. Measurement of self-efficacy is related to three dimensions: magnitude, strength and generality. Self-efficacy should be measured in terms of particularized judgments of capability that may vary across realms of activity, different levels of task demands within a given activity domain, and different situational circumstances.
The purpose of this article is to provide:
1. Overviews of the literature on the theoretical background of self-efficacy, its determinants and consequences and the way self-efficacy is supposed to be measured in general, and
2. An illustration of the measurement issues of self-efficacy when applied to the behavioral domain of diabetes management.
The construct of self-efficacy was first introduced by Albert Bandura, a psychologist, who used Social Learning Theory (later labeled as Social Cognitive Theory) as a conceptual basis for analysis of this construct (Bandura, 1977). Social Cognitive Theory represents a triadic reciprocal causation model in which the behavior of a person, the characteristics of that person, and the environment within which the behavior is performed are constantly interacting (Bandura, 1977, 1986). Thus, behavior is not simply the result of the environment and the person, just as the environment is not simply the result of the person and behavior. A change in one component has implications for the others. For example, if an individual has lost a job during a recessionary period, lack of money will influence his or her behavior and well-being (Bandura, 1995).
Dealing with one's environment involves, according to Bandura (1986), a complex set of behaviors. Cognitive, social, and behavioral subskills must be organized into integrated courses of action to exercise some control over events that affect people's lives. It is Bandura's conviction, supported by an increasing number of research findings from diverse fields, that the effective use and execution of these subskills is...