Aims
To evaluate the effects of a breastfeeding intervention on primiparous mothers' breastfeeding self‐efficacy, breastfeeding duration and exclusivity at 4 and 8 weeks postpartum.
Background
Few ...studies have examined the effects of breastfeeding self‐efficacy on improved breastfeeding outcomes among primiparous mothers in China.
Design
An experimental pre‐test and posttest, two‐group design was used in the study.
Methods
A total of 74 participants were recruited to the study from a tertiary hospital in central China, from June–October 2012. An individualized, standardized nursing intervention based on the Self‐Efficacy Theory was delivered to enhance mothers' breastfeeding self‐efficacy, breastfeeding duration and exclusivity at 4 and 8 weeks postpartum. Participants were randomly assigned to an intervention or referent group. Participants in the intervention group received three individualized, self‐efficacy‐enhancing sessions. Participants in the referent group received standard care.
Results
Participants in the intervention group showed significantly greater increases in breastfeeding self‐efficacy, exclusivity and duration than participants in the control group at 4 and 8 weeks postpartum (except for duration at 4 weeks). High baseline breastfeeding self‐efficacy predicted higher breastfeeding self‐efficacy later and more exclusive breast‐feeding.
Conclusion
The findings in this study suggest that intervention aimed at increasing self‐efficacy has a significant impact on maternal breastfeeding self‐efficacy and short‐term breastfeeding outcomes.
Social and ecological crises require people to act together, for instance, against climate change or social injustice. Psychological scholarship suggests that human agency, in terms of individuals’ ...self-efficacy and collective efficacy, plays a crucial role in motivating people to act for a better world. However, progress in this field and hence the utilization of its accumulated knowledge is hindered by manifold conceptualizations and operationalizations. We therefore identify key problems in how the concept of self-efficacy has evolved and been used in the domain of environmental protection and then present a conceptual solution: the triple-A framework. This framework organizes and integrates theoretical insights by differentiating which agents, actions, and aims are involved in assessments of efficacy. We then illustrate the framework’s broader application and highlight recommendations for improved measurement of self-efficacy beliefs. We further offer a research agenda on how human agency can be utilized to promote social and ecological aims.
Public Abstract
Many people do not act together against climate change or social inequalities because they feel they or their group cannot make a difference. Understanding how people come to feel that they can achieve something (a perception of self-efficacy) is therefore crucial for motivating people to act together for a better world. However, it is difficult to summarize already existing self-efficacy research because previous studies have used many different ways of naming and measuring it. In this article, we uncover the problems that this raises and propose the triple-A framework as a solution. This new framework shows which agents, actions, and aims are important for understanding self-efficacy. By offering specific recommendations for measuring self-efficacy, the triple-A framework creates a basis for mobilizing human agency in the context of climate change and social injustice.
Background
For decades, parental self‐efficacy (PSE), or parents' belief in their ability to influence their child in a healthy and success‐promoting manner, has been understood as a key factor in ...promoting healthy functioning for parents and their children. In that time, an extensive collection of research examining the specific impact of PSE on parents and their children has developed. However, to the authors' knowledge, no comprehensive and systematic review of the outcomes linked to this factor exists, and the two most closely related non‐systematic reviews were published over 10 years ago.
Methods
Therefore, by utilizing an iteratively optimized set of search terms applied across four databases, the current review sought to systematically collect, synthesize, and present the extant literature concerning the role of PSE in parent and child well‐being.
Results
This search strategy yielded a total of 115 studies, the results of which were organized into three broad thematic categories relating to: the parent and child relationship, parental mental health, or child development.
Conclusions
These results recapitulate the clinical relevance of PSE, and provide an updated and comprehensive understanding of both the role PSE plays in the welfare of parents and children, as well as the gaps in the literature as it currently stands.
The author reviews twelve of 111 articles focusing on teacher efficacy published in Teaching and Teacher Education since 1985. The twelve articles are placed in three sections that include a) ...instruments, factor analyses, and cultural influences, b) participants, contexts, and teacher instruction, and c) teacher wellness. These sections offer research and studies from various teacher efficacy investigators that share insights, understandings, and interpretations. The selected TATE articles provide a plausible (expanding) sphere of growing and developing research and studies in teacher efficacy.
•12 of 111 TATE articles on teacher efficacy reviewed.•Articles provide sphere of growing teacher efficacy research.•Researchers moving from teacher efficacy as elusive to engaging its complexity.
Using an expanded view of entrepreneurial feasibility, we hypothesize a model in which entrepreneurial intentions are fostered by proactive personality and trait competitiveness. In doing so, our ...study expands the concept of entrepreneurial feasibility to include anticipatory thinking and a generative view of entrepreneurial self-efficacy by considering broader forms of self-efficacy that proactive and competitive people are likely to develop – creative self-efficacy and learning self-efficacy. Results indicate multiple self-efficacy beliefs account for anticipatory entrepreneurial cognitions and that the relationship between entrepreneurial self-efficacy and entrepreneurial intentions is fully mediated by these cognitions. The practical implications of these findings are discussed.
•Entrepreneurial self-efficacy alone does not explain entrepreneurial intentions.•Anticipatory entrepreneurial cognitions precede entrepreneurial intentions.•Belief in one's ability to learn and adapt predicts anticipatory cognitions.•Learning and creative forms of self-efficacy shape entrepreneurial self-efficacy.•Proactive personality predicts learning self-efficacy and creative self-efficacy.
This paper distinguishes between teacher efficacy and teacher self-efficacy beliefs and describes a need for theory and research-based measures of teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs that are grounded in ...the context of the classroom. To meet this need, a new measure of teacher self-efficacy beliefs, the Teachers’ Efficacy Beliefs System-Self (TEBS-Self), is described by the authors. Principal components analysis results are presented from three independent studies performed in the United States (
n=2373 K-6 teachers) using the TEBS-Self.
Drawing on a social cognitive theory perspective, we contend that an employee's trust in oneself, or self‐efficacy, will interact with the individual's trust in the system, or trust in organization, ...to predict job attitudes and behaviours. Specifically, we expected that self‐efficacy would have stronger effects on job attitudes (job satisfaction and turnover intentions) and behaviours (task performance and organizational citizenship behaviours) to the degree to which employees perceive high levels of trust in organization. Using data collected from 300 employees and their respective supervisors at a manufacturing organization in Turkey across three waves, we found that self‐efficacy had more positive effects on job satisfaction, task performance, and citizenship behaviours when trust in organization was high. Interestingly, self‐efficacy had a positive effect on turnover intentions when trust in organization was low, indicating that high trust in organization buffered the effects of self‐efficacy on intentions to leave. The results suggest that the motivational value of trust in oneself is stronger to the degree to which employees also have high trust in the system, whereas low trust in system neutralizes the motivational benefits of self‐efficacy.
Practitioner points
Practicing managers should not only invest in increasing self‐efficacy of their employees, but also invest in building trust to improve employees’ attitudes, behaviours, and performance. This is because when employee trust in organization is high, employee self‐efficacy has greater potential to have a positive influence over job satisfaction, task performance, and organizational citizenship behaviours.
Self‐efficacy may actually increase an employee's desire to leave the organization when organizational conditions are unfavourable, such as in the case of low trust in the organization. Practicing managers should be aware that employees who have high levels of confidence may be at higher risk of turnover when they are unhappy with the organization.
Background
Parent self‐efficacy (PSE), parents' confidence in their ability to successfully raise their children, has proved to be a powerful direct predictor of specific positive parenting ...practices. The aim of this study was to validate the Italian version of the Tool to Measure Parenting Self‐Efficacy (TOPSE) using data from the questionnaires previously completed in a controlled before–after study conducted in 2015 to evaluate a newsletter programme to help improve parenting. Mothers and fathers of newborns were asked to complete the TOPSE at the child's birth (t0), at 6 months (t1) and at 12 months (t2): 265 TOPSE questionnaires were collected at t0 (43%), 158 at t1 (26%) and 188 at t2 (31%).
Methods
We measured internal reliability using Cronbach's alpha for each of the eight domains of the TOPSE. The intracluster correlation coefficient (ICC) was used to evaluate the external reliability only for parents with more than one child. Responsiveness was measured by testing the ability of the questionnaire to detect differences between groups and times that we expected to be measurable, based on consolidated findings in the literature. Mean scores of PSE improved from t0 to t2 (Hypothesis 1), PSE was lower at baseline for first‐time parents than for those with multiple children (Hypothesis 2) and the improvement from t0 to t2 was stronger for first‐time parents than for parents with multiple children (Hypothesis 3).
Results and Conclusion
Based on our sample of questionnaires, the Italian version of the TOPSE was reliable for almost all of the domains except for Emotion, Self‐acceptance and Learning, which could be refined by re‐framing or dropping one item. External reliability was moderate, bearing in mind that the questionnaire was repeated at different times over 12 months, during which parents normally change. Responsiveness was good, especially for the Emotion and Empathy domains.
For the first wave of pandemic influenza or a bioterrorist influenza attack, antiviral agents would be one of the few options to contain the epidemic in the United States until adequate supplies of ...vaccine were available. The authors use stochastic epidemic simulations to investigate the effectiveness of targeted antiviral prophylaxis to contain influenza. In this strategy, close contacts of suspected index influenza cases take antiviral agents prophylactically. The authors compare targeted antiviral prophylaxis with vaccination strategies. They model an influenza pandemic or bioterrorist attack for an agent similar to influenza A virus (H2N2) that caused the Asian influenza pandemic of 1957–1958. In the absence of intervention, the model predicts an influenza illness attack rate of 33% of the population (95% confidence interval (CI): 30, 37) and an influenza death rate of 0.58 deaths/1,000 persons (95% Cl: 0.4, 0.8). With the use of targeted antiviral prophylaxis, if 80% of the exposed persons maintained prophylaxis for up to 8 weeks, the epidemic would be contained, and the model predicts a reduction to an illness attack rate of 2% (95% Cl: 0.2, 16) and a death rate of 0.04 deaths/1,000 persons (95% CI: 0.0003, 0.25). Such antiviral prophylaxis is nearly as effective as vaccinating 80% of the population. Vaccinating 80% of the children aged less than 19 years is almost as effective as vaccinating 80% of the population. Targeted antiviral prophylaxis has potential as an effective measure for containing influenza until adequate quantities of vaccine are available.
There is strong and consistent evidence that identification with social groups is an important predictor of (ill‐)health‐related outcomes. However, the mediating mechanisms of the social ...identification–health link remain unclear. We present results from two studies, which aimed to test how perceived social support and collective self‐efficacy mediate the effect of social identification on emotional exhaustion, chronic stress, and depressive symptoms. Study 1 (N = 180) employed a longitudinal two‐wave design, whereas Study 2 (N = 100) used a field‐experimental design with a manipulation of participants’ social identity. Both studies consistently show that social identification was positively related to perceived social support, which, in turn, was positively associated with collective self‐efficacy. Collective self‐efficacy, finally, was negatively related to ill‐health outcomes.
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