Abstract

Objective: To describe the development of a self-efficacy instrument and to explore the changes by gender in student selfefficacy ratings over 1 year.

Design and Setting: An exploratory study utilizing an instrument that measures self-efficacy in undergraduate students in a university setting. Patients or Other Participants: Thirty students (13 males and 17 females) enrolled in the professional phase of an undergraduate athletic training program.

Main Outcome Measure(s): Student ratings of self-efficacy were measured using the Self-Efficacy in Athletic Training Student instrument. Validity was established through a panel of experts. Cronbach a was used to establish the reliability of the instrument. The instrument was administered 3 times during an academic year. Students were asked to rate their level of self-efficacy on a Likert scale (1 ¼ not at all confident; 5 ¼ very confident) on 16 components within 3 content areas.

Descriptive statistics were calculated, and a nonparametric analysis of variance was used to determine differences in selfefficacy based upon time for each gender. Post hoc contrasts were used to examine when significant differences occurred among the 3 measures.

Results: The internal consistency for the overall instrument and each content area ranged from a¼0.91 to 0.96. Analysis of variance indicated statistically significant differences (P , .003) across the 3 times, with significant changes in self-efficacy by gender, with greater increases for females across the 3 measures to similar male levels of self-efficacy at the final measure.

Conclusions: Students’ self-efficacy can be affected by many factors, some of which may be controlled or influenced. We have developed reliable measure for assessing student self-efficacy. It is the desire of the authors that athletic training programs will develop strategies to improve the efficacy of their students and use this method to assess the effectiveness of those strategies.

Department(s)

Public Health and Sports Medicine

Document Type

Article

DOI

https://doi.org/10.4085/0903127

Rights Information

© National Athletic Trainers’ Association

Keywords

self-confidence, self-esteem, self-assessment, athletic training education

Publication Date

7-1-2014

Journal Title

Athletic Training Education Journal

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