The sources of self-efficacy on non-music major college and university students who participated in musical activities with a focus on gender, experience level, and cultural background

The purpose of this study was to investigate non-music major college and university students’ self-efficacy beliefs and their perceptions of the four sources of self-efficacy as they related to their participation in active music making and creation in college (e.g., ensembles and musicals, group and private lessons, music theory classes). An online survey was used to collect students’ responses to statements that aligned with the four sources of self-efficacy: enactive mastery experiences, verbal persuasion, vicarious experiences, and physiological and affective states and demographic information about items such as gender identity, cultural background, and previous musical experiences. The participants included 111 students from 11 college and university campuses in Pennsylvania, of which 56 students identified as male and 55 students identified as female. No students listed any other gender identification. The participants also represented 14 unique cultural backgrounds which were categorized as either individualist or collectivist according to Hofstede et al.’s (2010) cultural dimensions. The source of self-efficacy with the highest collective mean score in this study was enactive mastery experience (M = 80.75). The source of self-efficacy with the second highest collective mean score in this study was physiological and affective states (M = 78.92). The only statistically significant difference found between genders was for enactive mastery experiences, with females having a higher mean score (M = 85.06) than males (M = 76.51). The number of previous musical experiences a student reported also impacted their perceptions of the sources of self-efficacy with statistically significant differences between students in the higher experience levels and students in the lower experience levels for the sources of enactive mastery experiences, physiological and affective states, and verbal persuasion. When gender and experience were investigated together, females in experience level 1 and 3 had statistically higher enactive mastery experiences scores than the males, and females in experience level 1 had significantly higher verbal persuasion scores as well. The findings of this study suggest that physiological and emotional states may have particular importance in developing musical self-efficacy. This result was consistent for students from all cultural backgrounds. Implications from this research suggest the importance of creating spaces where students can experience positive verbal persuasion and vicarious experiences, which may lead to positive enactive mastery experiences and physiological and affective states and further support the development of musical self-efficacy beliefs. Further research is needed to better understand the impact of cultural background on self-efficacy belief development and the sources of self-efficacy. This research could also be expanded to investigate socio-economic influences on musical self-efficacy beliefs