Determinants and structural relation of personal efficacy to collective efficacy

This study tested a structural model regarding the impact of socioeconomic status on people's perceived individual efficacy and its link to their perceived collective efficacy. In sociodemographic analyses younger participants, compared to their older counterparts. judged themselves less efficacious to manage their worklife, intimate partnerships, and financial condition, but of higher efficacy in promoting social change. Men had a higher sense of efficacy than women to contribute to the solution of social problems. In accord with the posited structural model, socioeconomic status contributed to both perceived personal efficacy to manage one's life circumstances and individual efficacy to contribute to the betterment of societal conditions. Both forms of perceived individual efficacy. in turn, contributed substantially to a sense of collective efficacy to effect social change through unified action. An alternative model in which perceived Collective efficacy is assigned causal primacy affecting perceived individual efficacy provided a poorer fit to the data.