PREDICTORS AND OUTCOMES OF ADOLESCENT SELF-EFFICACY BELIEFS: AN ANALYSIS OF INDIVIDUAL, PEER, FAMILY, AND NEIGHBORHOOD LEVEL VARIABLES

Adolescence is a period when young individuals face many challenging tasks. These include becoming resilient in the face of adversities, establishing and maintaining healthy relationships, achieving in school, and preparing for adult life. Self-efficacy beliefs are important to youth's success in accomplishing these tasks. Specifically, consistent with the premises of Bandura's Self-Efficacy Theory, ample evidence suggests that self-efficacy beliefs are highly critical in task selection, persistence, and successful completion. Nevertheless, few studies to date have examined the predictors of self-efficacy beliefs, or the role of efficacy beliefs in mediating the relationship between contextual factors and positive developmental outcomes. Three interrelated studies were conducted to examine 1) the structure of a multidimensional self-efficacy measure (Study I), 2) the individual, family, peer, and neighborhood predictors of adolescents' domain specific self-efficacy beliefs (Study II), and 3) the mediating role of domain specific self-efficacy beliefs in predicting adolescents' developmental outcomes (Study III). All three studies relied on a secondary analysis of the Project in Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN) data set. Specifically, surveys of youth aged 10-19, and systematic social observations conducted to measure neighborhood physical and social disorganization were examined. The findings of Study I (N = 1,487) provided evidence for the multidimensional structure of the self-efficacy measure, consistent with the original premises of Self-Efficacy Theory. The findings of Study II (N = 1,015) suggested that family environment and peer relations are the most consistent predictors of adolescents' domain-specific self-efficacy beliefs, while individual characteristics and neighborhood context exerted influence on specific domains only. The pattern of different predictors being linked to different self-efficacy domains underscores the importance of the multidimensional structure of self-efficacy beliefs, and the complexity of relationships between sources of influence, across levels and domains of self-efficacy beliefs. The findings of Study III provided evidence for the mediating role of domain specific self-efficacy beliefs. Overall, the findings underscore the importance of examining predictors and outcomes of self-efficacy beliefs in multiple domains using a multidimensional measure of efficacy beliefs