Monday, July 27, 2009

HELP

So we want to implement this study in the fall to see if our peer tutoring program actually impacts students' academic self-efficacy and locus of control when it comes to schoolwork.
I've been working on the lit. review & annotated bib. since the beginning of summer, and part of what I was looking for in doing that was a general college academic self-efficacy scale that we could use in the study (saving us the trouble of developing and validating one of our own).

Sure enough, there are several existing instruments. There's the College Self-Efficacy Inventory (CSEI, Solberg et al., 1993), the Academic Self-Confidence subscale from the larger Student Readiness Inventory (SRI, published & managed through ACT Inc.), and the Perceived Academic Self-Efficacy Scale (PASES), just to name a few.

BUT HOW IN THE HELL DO I GET MY HANDS ON ONE?

I am realizing now that never have I discussed in class or with professors how one gets ahold of these tests - especially the non-published ones. We talk about creating our own. We talk about how it's more convenient to use an existing test so you don't have to run all the reliability, validity, etc. But we haven't spent much time on finidng and getting your paws on these existing tests. So what do I do now? I mean, sure we could use the SRI, but it's $100.00 per set of 25 individual answer sheets/questionnaires - and that's just silly when we're only interested in one of the three subscales. I'd really like to use the CSEI (or some modification of it) with all the validation data on it, but I have NO idea how to get ahold of it.

Anybody have any suggestions out there?

1 comment:

kiki said...

Try asking Solberg directly for permission to use the scale and for a copy of the scale.

http://www.scholarcentric.com/success_highways_author_Scott_Solberg.html

And sometimes you can find exactly what you are looking for appended to an other document on the same topic (pp. 76-77:

http://www.lib.umd.edu/drum/bitstream/1903/2701/1/umi-umd-2629.pdf

Have fun with your study!!