Difference between Self Confidence and Self Efficacy

Difference between Self Confidence and Self Efficacy When the word self-efficacy is heard, it is often understood as self-confidence by many people. Self-confidence is not the same as self- efficacy. So, what does it mean by self-confidence and self efficacy. According to M. Colman (2002), self-confidence is defined as a trust or assertion in oneself, believing in ones aptitude, making a choice which maybe referring to a general context or to a specific event or doings. Some people recognise self-confidence as self-assurance. On the other hand, according to M. Colman, self-efficacy can be defined as the capability to attain the required outcome. Speaking of perceived self-efficacy generally means that the person has a lot of faith in his or her aptitude that the wanted outcome can be achieved. As mentioned by M. Colman, the concept of self-efficacy was broadly acknowledged in the course of power of Albert Bandura (the founder of the concept Observational Learning) who was born in the year 1925 in Canada but grew up and practised psycho logy in United States of America. This concept of self-efficacy became famous during the 1980s as well as the 1990s, which was later concluded in Banduras book entitled Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control, which was only published in the year 1997. According to A. Fast, L. Lewis, J. Bryant, A. Bocian, A. Cardullo, Rettig and Hammond (2010), those with self-efficacy tends to have higher level of desire, higher obligation and are also able to restore themselves after facing with failure better than those with poorer height of self-efficacy. According to Carmona, P. Buunk, Dijkstra and M. Peiro (2008), people with higher levels of self-efficacy tends to view heavy responsibilities as challenge to be tackled other than viewing it as danger or risk that has to be stayed away from at all times. Then arises the second question, does self-efficacy affect performance? For an example, for a person who believes that he or she is very good in mathematics and has all the skills and ability to solve high standard of mathematical problems (especially algebra, trigonometry and calculus); does he or she actually has higher performance level in the mathematics examination at the end of the term? The word performance, according to Hornby (2005) is define as how good or successfully a person carries out an activity. According to M. Colman, the word performance can be understood as the course of administering a series of activities. Carmona, P. Buunk, Dijkstra and M. Peiro (2008) conducted a study on 120 university students, which comprised of 58 Females and 62 Males. The participants in their study were between the ages of 19 to 30 years old (mean age= 22.23 years old). Carmona et al. got the participants to fill up the questionnaire on goal orientation, social comparison responses and self-efficacy (questionnaire entitled Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire, which is also known as MSLQ by Pintrich and De Groot, 1990) and were given five EUR each for their willingness to partake in this study. The MSLQ probes on the participants own potential in doing well in their class, course, or their subject. This questionnaire was then matched with the participants second trimester grade (mean of the grade taken) to test on their performance. They found that self-efficacy had a significantly strong positive relationship with performance. In other words, participants with high self- efficacy had high performanc e achievement. The findings of this study do bring substantial understanding as it was conducted among students who should be tested on performance and self-efficacy. This is because students are the people whose self-efficacy is would be different among one another depending on their personality, work load, pressure, family background and so on, thus can be tested against their performance without experiencing any difficulty. In a study conducted by Williams and Williams (2010), the relationship between self-efficacy and mathematics was investigated. This study was done on students ages 15 years old from 33 nations, which includes Australia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Greece, Indonesia, Thailand, Uruguay and many more countries. One of the measurements used was the Mathematics self-efficacy (how confident are you to solve the mathematical problem were asked). While the other measurement used was the mathematics achievement (open ended question, structured questions and multiple choice questions) where both the measurements were taken from The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2003 Mathematics Achievement Test, which focuses on self-efficacy students have on mathematics and compare it with their performance in mathematics. They also found that females have lower level of self-efficacy compared to males where the mathematics is concerned. Although this study was difficult to be carried out as the researches had to find the balance between which grades of the 15 year olds from the various countries would easily match each other to ease the process of this study, the findings of this study can well be generalized due to the wide range of participants. A. Fast, L. Lewis, J. Bryant, A. Bocian, A. Cardullo, Rettig and Hammond (2010) carried out a research among 1163 primary school students which comprised Latino, Caucasion, African American, Asian, Pacific Islanders, Filipino and American Indian in California. There were 594 Females and 569 Males in this study. The participants were given the California Standard Test (CST) for Mathematics and the Student Motivation Questionnaire (SMQ). A. Fast et al. found that students with elevated intensity of self-efficacy had elevated marks in their final math exam given at the end of their term. Although this study was focused only on the Californians, yet the significant results obtained can be accepted as the number of participants was large enough. B. Yeo and Neal (2006) conducted a study on 93 psychology students (mean age=19.53 years old). The participants were inclusive of 36 males, 56 females and 1 unknown gender. The participants were asked to whether two aircraft that put in pairs will collide into each other as they are flying or have a smooth journey without colliding into each other. The preciseness and how fast the participants can guess the answer was noted. A exact answer were given up to 40 points while for a wrong answer, 25 points will be taken away. The general self-efficacy was measures using the New General Self-Efficacy Scale by Chen, Gully and Eden (2001). The results obtained showed that the self-efficacy was related to task performance with a significance, p (p