Validation of a New General Self-Efficacy Scale

Researchers have suggested that general self-efficacy (GSE) can substantially contribute to organizational theory, research, and practice. Unfortunately, the limited construct validity work conducted on commonly used GSE measures has highlighted such potential problems as low content validity and multidimension-ality. The authors developed a new GSE (NGSE) scale and compared its psycho-metric properties and validity to that of the Sherer et al. General Self-Efficacy Scale (SGSE). Studies in two countries found that the NGSE scale has higher construct validity than the SGSE scale. Although shorter than the SGSE scale, the NGSE scale demonstrated high reliability, predicted specific self-efficacy (SSE) for a variety of tasks in various contexts, and moderated the influence of previous performance on subsequent SSE formation. Implications, limitations, and directions for future organizational research are discussed. Self-efficacy, defined as " beliefs in one's capabilities to mobilize the motivation, cog-nitive resources, and courses of action needed to meet given situational demands ", self-efficacy beliefs vary on three dimensions: (a) level or magnitude (particular level of task difficulty), (b) strength (certainty of successfully performing a particular level of task difficulty), and Authors' Note: We thank Jon-Andrew Whiteman for assistance in data collection and James Maddux, (c) generality (the extent to which magnitude and strength beliefs generalize across tasks and situations). Bandura's restrictive words " given situational demands " have given self-efficacy a narrow focus, and most researchers have limited their research to the magnitude and strength dimensions, conceptualizing and studying self-efficacy as a task-specific or state-like construct (SSE) (e. More recently, researchers have become interested in the more trait-like generality dimension of self-efficacy, which has been termed general self-efficacy (GSE) (e. GSE is defined as " one's belief in one's overall competence to effect requisite performances across a wide variety of achievement situations " (Eden, in press) or as " individuals' perception of their ability to perform across a variety of different situations " (Judge, Erez, et al., 1998, p. 170). Thus, GSE captures differences among individuals in their tendency to view themselves as capable of meeting task demands in a broad array of contexts. have suggested that SSE is a motivational state and GSE is a motivational trait. According to Eden, both GSE and SSE denote beliefs about one's ability to achieve desired outcomes, but the constructs differ in the scope (i.e., generality or specificity) of the performance domain contemplated. As such, GSE and SSE share similar antecedents (e.g., actual …