Predictive utility of subject-, task-, and problem-specific self-efficacy judgments for immediate and delayed academic performances

Self-efficacy perceptions of Korean female high school students (N = 202) were assessed at 3 different levels of specificity in English and mathematics. Problem-specific, task-specific, and subject-specific self-efficacy beliefs all formed separate factors in both subject areas. However, the 3 self-efficacy factors were too highly correlated to contribute independently to outcome prediction. Various nested models produced comparable fits as long as they contained predictive paths from either the problem- or the task-specific self-efficacy factor. Contrary to the hypothesis, predictive relations between self-efficacy and achievement were not much affected by their temporal contiguity. When the author combined English and math factors in a single structural model, English achievement was predicted only by English self-efficacy and math achievement only by math self-efficacy. The same pattern was maintained regardless of the specificity of self-efficacy measures.