Self-efficacy: what the General Self-Efficacy Scale says about your belief in yourself

Two students fail the same exam. One decides the subject is beyond them and stops trying. The other decides they prepared the wrong way and changes the plan. They may have the same ability. What differs is how each judges their chances of doing better.

Albert Bandura called that judgement self-efficacy. In a 1977 paper he described it as a person's belief that they can carry out what a situation requires, and argued that it shapes which tasks people take on, how hard they try and how long they keep going after a setback. Our General Self-Efficacy Scale test measures a broad version of this belief.

Ten statements from Schwarzer and Jerusalem

For Bandura, self-efficacy was tied to specific tasks: you can feel very capable at work and helpless in front of a tax form. In 1979 the German psychologists Matthias Jerusalem and Ralf Schwarzer wrote a scale for a more general sense that you can cope with difficulties. It was later shortened to ten statements and translated into many languages.

Our test uses those ten statements in the English version by Schwarzer and Jerusalem (1995), with the original four answers: not at all true, hardly true, moderately true and exactly true. Examples: "I can always manage to solve difficult problems if I try hard enough", "I can remain calm when facing difficulties because I can rely on my coping abilities" and "I can usually handle whatever comes my way".

All ten statements feed one score, and all are worded in the same direction, so a higher score means a stronger belief that you can cope. In research the answers are added up to a total between 10 and 40.

Where the belief comes from

Bandura named four sources. The strongest is mastery experience, having handled something difficult yourself. The second is watching people similar to you succeed. The third is encouragement from others, which works best when it is realistic. The fourth is how you read your own body: a racing heart before a presentation can feel like proof that you cannot do it, or like ordinary nerves.

These sources explain why self-efficacy can change. It grows mostly through doing things a little harder than what you have done before, and finishing them.

Self-efficacy and self-esteem

Self-efficacy is a judgement of what you can do. Self-esteem is a judgement of what you are worth. You can like yourself and still doubt you could fix a broken laptop, or feel sure you can run a project while thinking little of yourself as a person. The Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale measures the second.

The general version of self-efficacy has held up across cultures. In 2002 Urte Scholz, Benicio Gutiérrez-Doña, Shonali Sud and Ralf Schwarzer compared data from the scale in 25 countries and found that it measured a single general factor in each of them.

How to read your score

A high score means you expect to find a way when problems come. It can also mean less caution than a task deserves, so compare it with your actual track record.

A low score often follows a run of setbacks, or a period when other people solved problems for you. Pick one problem you have been avoiding, make the first step small enough to finish this week, and notice when you finish it. That is a mastery experience in its smallest form.

Because all ten statements point the same way, a general habit of agreeing with statements can push the score up a little. Keep that in mind if most of your answers were exactly true.

If your doubts are mostly about long-term goals, the Grit Scale looks at perseverance. Teachers can read about the classroom version in teacher self-efficacy, and the post on locus of control covers a related belief, whether what happens to you depends on your own actions.