Resumo

BRENLLA, María Elena; ARANGUREN, María; ROSSARO, María Florencia  e  VAZQUEZ, Natalia. Adaptation to Buenos Aires of the General Self-Efficacy Scale. Interdisciplinaria [online]. 2010, vol.27, n.1, pp.77-94. ISSN 1668-7027.

Self-efficacy is grounded in a larger theoretical framework known as social cognitive theory, which postulates that human achievement depends on interactions between one's behaviors, personal factors and environmental conditions (Bandura, 1986, 1997). Self-efficacy is understood as a construct that includes a stable feature or believing that a person has about his own ability to deal with a wide range of stressor of daily life. Moreover, self-efficacy beliefs work as an important set of proximal determinants of human motivation, affect, and action (Bandura,1989). The perception of self-efficacy has big impact on human adaptation and development. The General Self-Efficacy Scale was originally developed in Germany by Jerusalem and Schwarzer. At first they constructed a 20-item version and later as a reduced 10-item version (Jerusalem & Schwarzer, 1992; Schwarzer,1993). The GSES is a 10-item, 4-point Likert type scale. It was developed to assess a general sense of perceived self-efficacy in order to predict how people manage coping with daily difficulties and stressful events. The GSES, developed to measure this construct at the broadest level, has been adapted to many languages. The psychometric properties of this instrument areexamined among participants from 25 countries. Cronbach's alphas ranged from .73 to .91 and the findings suggest the global of the underlying construct. The goal of this article is to report psychometric properties (reliability, validity and normative data) of the Argentinean adaptation of the Jerusalem and Schwarzer General Self-Efficacy Scale (GSES). In the present study, the scale was applied to a sample of 292 participants of Buenos Aires (Ar gentina). We carried out a Principal Components Analysis. The first Eigen value was clearly higher than the others but the second Eigen value was a slight higher than unity (3.25; 1.16; .98; .86 y .75). One third (33%) of the variance is accounted for by first component, where as a second component would only account for 11% of the variance. The results show an appropriate internal consistency (.76) and significant correlations with planning (r= .417; p< .001) and activity strategies (r= .357; p< .001) of coping stress and a negative correlation with external locus of control (r = -.274; p< .001). In order to determine whether there were differences in scores by sex, age and educational level, we used the t Student and ANOVA tests. It was found a significant difference by sex (males: M = 33.6, SD = 3.24, and females: M = 32.6, SD = 3.43; t (287) = 2.814, p< .05), with similar average scores. Also, it was found a significant difference by age range (18 to 25: M = 32.4, SD = 2.9; 26 to 44: M = 32.9, DE = 3.2, and 45 to 65: M = 33.9, SD = 3.6; F (2, 286) = 5.142, p< .05) and education (Elementary school: M = 32.2, SD = 4.5; High School: M = 32.6, SD = 3.4; College Graduates: M = 33.9, SD = 3.0; F (2, 286) = 3.392, p < .035). But post hoc comparisons showed not significant differences between groups. According to this, differences found are not relevant and the perception of self-efficacy is similar for both sexes, age range or education level. Finally, all the results indicate evidences of reliability and validity of the Argentinean adaptation of the scale and guarantee it's usefulness in future studies.

Palavras-chave : Self-efficacy; Validity; Reliability; Argentinean adaptation.

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