Development and validation of an instrument to assess self-efficacy in personnel training, development and education situations / Construção e validação de um instrumento para avaliar auto-eficácia em situações de treinamento, desenvolvimento e educação de pessoas

• Main Authors: Pedro Paulo Murce Meneses, Gardênia da Silva Abbad
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: SpringerOpen 2010-01-01
• Series: Psicologia: Reflexão e Crítica
• Subjects: Self-efficacy; Trainees' characteristics; Self-referent variables; Training evaluation
• Online Access: http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0102-79722010000100015&lng=pt&nrm=iso&tlng=pt

Researches done in the last decades suggest the importance of individual characteristics, such as self-efficacy, to explain the effects of training programs. Several specific measures of self-efficacy were developed and validated. These scales are confounded with impact measures that evaluate post-training individual performance. Studies concerning the development of self-efficacy generic measures are still rare. This study reports the development of a self-efficacy generic scale. The instrument, made up of 15 items, was submitted to a theoretical validation as well as to an empirical validation. In this last validation process, 1845 trainees participated of the research. Their answers were submitted to exploratory factor analysis, and the results indicated the validity, precision, and reliability of the self-efficacy instrument which was developed.