Examining validity of general self-efficacy scale for assessing engineering students’ self-efficacy

Self-efficacy has been found to be one of the key factors that are responsible for academic success of engineering students.However,there exist multiple instrumentsfor determiningthe self-efficacyof engineering studentsand studiesconducted inthis area in the past have varied significantly in their use of a general or engineering domain-specific constructs. This workinvestigates whether an engineering-domain specific self-efficacy measurement instrument is required for determining theself-efficacybeliefs of engineeringstudentsor whethera generalinstrumentwill suffice. Furthermore,thisstudy also aimstoinvestigate the effect of gender, class level, and transfer status of students on their engineering self-efficacy beliefs. Over twohundred engineering students from Texas A&M University and Houston Community College are surveyed on 39questions divided across 6 distinct self-efficacy instruments. The survey data was then analyzed to determine whether thereexists a significant difference in the scores obtained across the generic and the domain-specific instruments. Factor analysisis also performed to explore the interrelationships among the questions belonging to different self-efficacy instruments. Theresults reveal that there exists a significant difference in the scores across the two types of instruments.