Construction, adaptation, and validation of the Academic Self-Efficacy Scale (ASES)

Abstract

Self-efficacy expectancies, according to Bandura (2001), are related to particular domains of performance, thus, self-efficacy evaluations must be microanalytic, creating the need to construct specific instruments adapted to the particularities of each domain. Therefore, we begin this article by describing the various steps in the construction of the Academic Self-Efficacy Scale (ASES): (i) the definition of its theoretical and practical background, based on literature reviews and on interviews with students and teachers; (ii) the definition of its dimensions and the conception of its items; and (iii) the pre-test, that includes the revision of the items by experts and its discussion in aloud reflections with students, followed by a preliminary study with 207 students. Finally, we present the results of an adaptation and validation study with 1.302 students, which evidence the good internal consistency, but the poor discriminative validity of ASES’s dimensions, and the confirmatory factor analyses reveal that the model with three correlated factors, allowing the existence of covariance between some items’ residuals, fits better to the data. 

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17575/rpsicol.v20i2.388