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Cross-Cultural
Assessment
Ralf Schwarzer & Urte Scholz
Introduction Perceived Self-Efficacy as a Personal Coping ResourceThe construct of self-efficacy, which was introduced by Bandura, represents one core aspect of his social-cognitive theory (1). While outcome expectancies refer to the perception of the possible consequences of one’s action, self-efficacy expectancies refer to personal action control or agency. A person who believes in being able to produce a desired effect can conduct a more active and self-determined life course. This ”can do”-cognition mirrors a sense of control over one’s environment. It reflects the belief of being able to control challenging environmental demands by means of taking adaptive action. It can be regarded as a self-confident view of one’s capability to deal with certain life stressors. According to theory and research (1), self-efficacy makes a difference in how people feel, think and act. In terms of feeling, a low sense of self-efficacy is associated with depression, anxiety, and helplessness. Such individuals also have low self-esteem and harbor pessimistic thoughts about their accomplishments and personal development. In terms of thinking, a strong sense of competence facilitates cognitive processes and performance in a variety of settings, including quality of decision-making and academic achievement. When it comes to preparing action, self-related cognitions are a major ingredient of the motivation process. Self-efficacy levels can enhance or impede motivation. People with high self-efficacy choose to perform more challenging tasks (1). They set themselves higher goals and stick to them. Actions are preshaped in thought, and people anticipate either optimistic or pessimistic scenarios in line with their level of self-efficacy. Once an action has been taken, high self-efficacious people invest more effort and persist longer than those who are low in self-efficacy. When setbacks occur, they recover more quickly and maintain the commitment to their goals. Self-efficacy also allows people to select challenging settings, explore their environments, or create new ones. Self-referent thought has become an issue that pervades psychological research in many domains. It has been found that a strong sense of personal efficacy is related to better health, higher achievement, and more social integration (1-2). Self-efficacy is commonly understood as being domain-specific; that is, one can have more or less firm self-beliefs in different domains or particular situations of functioning. But some researchers have also conceptualized a generalized sense of self-efficacy that refers to a global confidence in one’s coping ability across a wide range of demanding or novel situations. General self-efficacy aims at a broad and stable sense of personal competence to deal effectively with a variety of stressful situations.
Research Questions The present study examines the psychometric properties of the General Self-Efficacy Scale in 19 languages. The main question is whether the scale is reliable and homogeneous within each sample. This requires the determination of internal consistencies, unidimensionality, and item-total correlations. Moreover, the mean differences of composite scores between countries are being explored.
Method Measurement of Generalized Perceived Self-Efficacy in Different CulturesGeneralized perceived self-efficacy is assessed with a psychometric scale. The German version of this scale was originally developed and used by Matthias Jerusalem and Ralf Schwarzer in 1981 as a 20-item version and later as an improved 10-item version (3). Typical items are: ”Thanks to my resourcefulness, I know how to handle unforeseen situations,” and ”When I am confronted with a problem, I can usually find several solutions.” The scale has been used in numerous research projects, where it has typically yielded internal consistencies between alpha = .75 and .91. Its stability has been examined in several longitudinal studies. In a sample of 246 German cardiac surgery patients who filled out the measure before surgery and again after a half-year recovery period, the retest-reliability was r = .67. In a sample of 140 teachers in Germany, a stability coefficient of r = .75 was found after one year. Over the same time period, 2,846 students in Germany filled out the scale twice; a retest-reliability of r = .55 was found. Finally, for a two-year period there were coefficients of r = .47 for East German male migrants and r = .63 for their female counterparts. Currently, the ten self-efficacy items have been adapted to 26 languages by bilingual native speakers based on the German and English versions of the instrument. So far, several studies have been published that compare the psychometric properties for the German, English, Dutch, Spanish, Russian, Greek, Arabian, Hungarian, Polish, Chinese, Indonesian, Japanese, and Korean versions (4-8). All language versions and references are available on-line at http://www.RalfSchwarzer.de/
Samples The present sample consisted of 17,553 persons from 22 countries, including 6,678 men and 8,613 women, as well as some who did not indicate their sex. Age was assessed in categories, with 48% of the men (n = 6,312) and 44% of the women (n = 8,576) being between 15 and 20 years old. Many respondents (n = 3,130), however, did not disclose their age.
Results Principal component analysis confirmed the unidimensionality of the scale, with eigenvalues of 4.43, 0.84, 0.79, and smaller. This replicates findings from 13 other samples, for which Schwarzer and Born (4) report also a one-factor solution with similar eigenvalues of 4.9, 0.81, 0.72, and smaller. The ten loadings for the first principal component are: .56, .54, .63, .72, .75, .64, .71, .68, .70, and .70. Figure 1 displays the frequency distribution of the self-efficacy sum scores. This comes close to a normal distribution which, again, is in line with previous research. The chart in Figure 1 represents the following descriptive statistics: mean = 29.46, standard deviation = 5.33, kurtosis = .38, skewness = -.52 based on 17,553 observations.
Figure 1. Distribution of Self-Efficacy Sum Scores for Total Sample (N = 17,553) The response range at each item was 1 to 4; and correspondingly, the theoretical range of sum scores was from 10 to 40. The mean of 29.46 indicates that the scale is more sensitive to detecting individual differences in the lower range than in the higher range. Focusing on the mean differences among the international samples, a two-way analysis of variance was computed with nations and gender as factors and self-efficacy composite scores as dependent variable. Significant main effects were found for nations (F[15,14846] = 284.19, p < .001) and gender (F[1, 14846] = 41.6, p < .01). An interaction also emerged (F[15,14846] = 3.45, p < .001). Figure 2 displays the mean sum scores broken down by 16 nations and gender. Within the remaining nations, no distinction for gender was made. The lowest means were found for male and female Japanese, followed by Hong Kong Chinese and Koreans. Highest values were found for Costa Ricans, Peruans, and Russians.
Figure 2. Mean Sum Scores Broken Down by Nations and Gender
Further Evidence for Validity Evidence for the validity of the scale has been published in previous articles. New evidence has been accumulated recently in a large-scale German field research project with 3,514 high school students and 302 teachers (9). In the student sample, general self-efficacy was correlated .49 with optimism and .45 with the perception of challenge in stressful situations. In the teacher sample, correlations were obtained with proactive coping (.55), self-regulation (.58), and procrastination (-.56). Moreover, there was a substantial relationship to all three dimensions of teacher burnout (emotional exhaustion -.47, depersonalisation -.44, and lack of accomplishment -.75). Similar evidence for validity was found within a sample of teachers in Hong Kong (10).
Discussion The psychometric properties of the self-efficacy scale turned out to be very satisfactory and in line with previous research. The construct seems to be a universal one since very similar characteristics have been found in many cultures. It can be recommended, therefore, to use the instrument for studies within countries. However, before truly cross-cultural comparisons at the mean level can be interpreted, further research into the construct adaptation is needed. The mean levels of composite scores differ between countries. The cause of such differences may lie in culture-specific personality dispositions, but it can as well be attributed to sampling characteristics and to the translation itself. For example, it could be that the low mean scores of the Japanese are due to the possibility that the Japanese adaptation is too ”difficult,” so that respondents are reluctant to endorse the items.
References (1) Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. New York: Freeman. (2) Schwarzer, R. (Ed.) (1992). Self-efficacy: Thought control of action. Washington, DC: Hemisphere. (3) Schwarzer, R., & Jerusalem, M. (1995). Generalized Self-Efficacy scale. In J. Weinman, S. Wright, & M. Johnston, Measures in health psychology: A user’s portfolio. Causal and control beliefs (pp. 35-37). Windsor, UK: NFER-NELSON. (4) Schwarzer, R., & Born, A. (1997). Optimistic self-beliefs: Assessment of general perceived self-efficacy in thirteen cultures. World Psychology, 3(1-2), 177-190. (5) Schwarzer, R., Bäßler, J., Kwiatek, P., Schröder, K., & Zhang, J. X. (1997). The assessment of optimistic self-beliefs: Comparison of the German, Spanish, and Chinese versions of the General Self-Efficacy scale. Applied Psychology: An International Review, 46(1), 69-88. (6) Schwarzer, R., Born, A., Iwawaki, S., Lee, Y.-M., Saito, E., & Yue, X. (1997). The assessment of optimistic self-beliefs: Comparison of the Chinese, Indonesian, Japanese and Korean versions of the General Self-Efficacy Scale. Psychologia: An International Journal of Psychology in the Orient, 40(1), 1-13. (7) Schwarzer, R., Mueller, J., & Greenglass, E. (1999). Assessment of perceived general self-efficacy on the Internet: Data collection in cyberspace. Anxiety, Stress, and Coping, 12, 145-161. (8) Zhang, J. X., & Schwarzer, R. (1995). Measuring optimistic self-beliefs: A Chinese adaptation of the General Self-Efficacy Scale. Psychologia, 38(3), 174-181. (9) Schwarzer, R., & Jerusalem, M. (Eds.) (1999). Skalen zur Erfassung von Lehrer- und Schülermerkmalen. Dokumentation der psychometrischen Verfahren im Rahmen der Wissenschaftlichen Begleitung des Modellversuchs Selbstwirksame Schulen. [Scales for the assessment of teacher and student characteristics.] Berlin, Germany: Freie Universität Berlin. (10) Schwarzer, R., Schmitz, G. S., & Tang, C. (2000). Teacher Burnout in Hong Kong and Germany: A cross-cultural validation of the Maslach Burnout Inventory. Anxiety, Stress, and Coping (in press).
Paper
presented at the Asian Congress of Health Psychology 2000: Health
Psychology and Culture, |
