Secondary School Students’ Chemistry Self-Efficacy: Its Importance, Measurement, and Sources - Affective Dimensions in Chemistry Education - page 194

3.1 Measurement of General Chemistry Self-Efficacy

Many researchers have constructed items and surveys to measure general chemistry
self-efficacy (see Table 1 ). In the paragraphs that follow, I briefly review those
surveys. For example, in the USA, Smist ( 1993 ) used six questionnaire items to
measure a sample of college students

self-efficacy for learning chemistry. The
items were administered to the students before and after they took a freshman
general chemistry course. The internal consistency of data was high (Cronbach

'

s

'

ʱ ¼ 0.90), but the six items were not constructed to measure students self-efficacy

'

for learning specific chemical concepts.
In New Zealand, Coll, Dalgety, and Salter ( 2002 ) developed fairly broad items to
measure first-year university students self-efficacy for learning chemistry. Their

revised version of the questionnaire consisted of 17 items with a 7-point semantic
differential format (Dalgety et al., 2003 ; Dalgety & Coll, 2006a , 2006b ). Sample

'

Table 1 Examples of items measuring general chemistry self-efficacy
Source Instruction and sample item Response format

Smist ( 1993 ) Howmuch confidence do you have about

doing each of the behaviors listed
below? [6 chemistry tasks listed, e.g.,
“getting good grades in chemistry,”
“doing chemistry homework problems
well,” “understanding abstract chemical
concepts”]

5-point rating scale from A (quite a
lot) to E (very little)

Dalgety, Coll,
and Jones
( 2003 )

Please indicate how confident you feel
about [followed by 17 statements, e.g.,
“applying a set of chemistry rules to
different elements of the periodic table,”
“achieving a passing grade in a chemical
hazards course,” “tutoring another stu-
dent in a first-year chemistry course”]

7-point semantic differential for-
mat with the paired adjectives “not
confident” and “totally confident”

¸ apa Aydin
and
Uzuntiryaki
( 2009 )

Please indicate your opinion about each
of the statements below [16 statements
presented, e.g., “How well can you
define the fundamental concepts in
chemistry?” “How well can you choose
an appropriate formula to solve a chem-
istry problem?” “How well can you col-
lect data during the chemistry
laboratory?”]

9-point rating scale from 1 (very
poor) to 9 (very well)

Uzuntiryaki
and ¸ apa
Aydin ( 2009 )

Please indicate your opinion about each
of the statements below. [21 statements
presented, e.g., “To what extent can you
explain chemical laws and theories?”
“How well can you work with
chemicals?” “To what extent can you
propose solutions to everyday problems
by using chemistry?”]

9-point rating scale from 1 (very
poor) to 9 (very well)