Secondary School Students’ Chemistry Self-Efficacy: Its Importance, Measurement, and Sources - Affective Dimensions in Chemistry Education - page 191

enhances achievement, which in turn boosts self-efficacy, and so on. Individuals

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self-efficacy mediates between their previous and subsequent academic

attainments.
The meta-analysis conducted by Multon et al. ( 1991 ) found that, overall, self-
efficacy beliefs can account for about 14 % of the variance in students

academic
performance and about 12 % of the variance in their academic persistence. The
percentages varied across types of research design, measures of academic achieve-
ment, students

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ability levels, and types of schools. For example, experimental
studies of self-efficacy treatments were found to explain 34 % of the variance in
academic performance. Measures of academic performance included standardized
achievement tests, course grades, and basic skill tasks. Academic persistence was
measured by the time spent on task, number of tasks attempted, or number of
academic terms completed.
Schunk ( 1981 ) randomly assigned 56 American elementary school students to
experimental and control groups and discovered that the students

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self-efficacy was
an accurate predictor of their arithmetic performance as assessed by an achievement
test. Bandura ( 1993 ) reported that when the students were selected at three levels of
mathematical ability—low, medium, and high—those students with higher mathe-
matical self-efficacy chose to rework more of the difficult problems given to them
and obtained a higher percentage of accurate solutions, irrespective of ability levels.
Hence, the students performed poorly in mathematics because they lacked the
requisite skills or they possessed the skills, but they lacked the self-efficacy beliefs
to use them effectively.
Hampton and Mason ( 2003 ) collected 278 American high school students

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data
on self-efficacy beliefs and academic achievement at two time points. With the aid
of structural equation modeling, they found that self-efficacy was positively related
to academic achievement obtained at the end of the semester. Lau and Roeser
( 2002 ) examined how cognitive abilities and motivational factors were associated
with high school students

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science achievement. The results of their hierarchical
regression analyses indicated that the students

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science self-efficacy positively

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predicted their science test scores ( β ¼ 0.20, p

< 0.01), science grades ( β ¼ 0.16,

p

< 0.05).
Furthermore, Areepattamannil, Freeman, and Klinger ( 2011 ) used hierarchical
linear modeling to analyze the Canadian PISA data. They compared the effects of
different student-level variables on science achievement, including enjoyment of
science, general interest in science, instrumental motivation to learn science, future-
oriented motivation to learn science, self-efficacy in science, and self-concept in
science. They reported that science self-efficacy had the largest predictive effect on
science achievement. Pajares ( 1996 ) also pointed out that
Efficacy beliefs help determine how much effort people will expend on an activity, how
long they will persevere when confronting obstacles, and how resilient they will prove in
the face of adverse situations—the higher the sense of efficacy, the greater the effort,
persistence, and resilience. Efficacy beliefs also influence individuals

< 0.05), and choices of science majors and careers ( β ¼ 0.16, p

thought patterns and
emotional reactions. People with low self-efficacy may believe that things are tougher than
they really are, a belief that fosters stress, depression, and a narrow vision of how best to

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