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Self‐efficacy beliefs and the writing performance of entering high school students
Author(s) -
Pajares Frank,
Johnson Margaret J.
Publication year - 1996
Publication title -
psychology in the schools
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.738
H-Index - 75
eISSN - 1520-6807
pISSN - 0033-3085
DOI - 10.1002/(sici)1520-6807(199604)33:2<163::aid-pits10>3.0.co;2-c
Subject(s) - aptitude , psychology , apprehension , self efficacy , path analysis (statistics) , developmental psychology , fear of negative evaluation , social psychology , anxiety , cognitive psychology , statistics , mathematics , psychiatry , social anxiety
Path analysis was used to test the influence of writing self‐efficacy, writing apprehension, and writing aptitude on the essay‐writing performance of 181 ninth‐grade students. A model that also included gender accounted for 53% of the variance in performance. As hypothesized, both aptitude and students' self‐efficacy beliefs had strong direct effects on performance. Aptitude also had a strong direct effect on self‐efficacy, which largely mediated the indirect effect of aptitude on performance. Self‐efficacy had a strong direct effect on apprehension, which, in turn, had a modest effect on performance. Girls and boys did not differ in aptitude or performance, but girls reported lower writing self‐efficacy. Native English‐speaking Hispanic students had lower aptitude and performance scores, lower self‐efficacy, and higher apprehension. Results support the hypothesized role of self‐efficacy in Bandura's (1986) social cognitive theory. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.