Academic Self-Efficacy Among Urban Health Care Students

Consistent with social-cognitive career theory, previous research has found empirical support for the role of social cognitive factors, such as stress and academic self-efficacy, in determining academic performance (Zajacova, Lynch, & Espenshade, 2005). The current study examined vocational identity status (Vocational Identity Status Assessment, VISA; Porfeli, Lee, Vondracek, & Weigold, 2011) and college stress (College Stress Inventory; Solberg, O’Brien, Villareal, Kennel, & Davis, 1993) as predictors of college self-efficacy, defined as a student’s confidence in his/her ability to complete a college-related task (Solberg, Hale, Villareal, & Kavanagh, 1993). We explored the notion of whether more adaptive dimensions of vocational identity would be related to higher levels of college self-efficacy, as measured by the College Self-Efficacy Inventory (Solberg et al., 1993), among pre-medical college students enrolled in an urban primary care track program