Monitoring trends and accuracy of self‐efficacy beliefs during interventions: Advantages and potential applications to school‐based settings

Self‐efficacy measures are context‐specific assessment tools designed to evaluate students' perceptions of capability to attain specific outcomes on particular tasks. These measures are important because they possess several desirable features typical of progress‐monitoring tools (i.e., context specific, free of reactive effects, strong psychometric properties), have been shown to be strong predictors of motivated and self‐regulatory behaviors, and possess many advantages relative to more global self‐report scales of motivation. In this article, a general framework for using these scales as a supplemental assessment tool to behavioral or skill‐based assessments will be presented and discussed. The key focus of this article involves illustrating how practitioners can evaluate and interpret the trends in students' self‐efficacy judgments as well as the accuracy of these judgments during the implementation and evaluation of academic interventions. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.