Validation of the General Self-Efficacy Scale in psychiatric outpatient care

Background: Self-efficacy has been used to explain and predict human characteristics in different domains, including health behavior. The aim of this paper is to study the internal consistency, components, and convergent validity of the Spanish version of the General Self-Efficacy Scale (USE) in psychiatric outpatients. Methods: A convenience sample of 966 consecutive psychiatric out patients completed in 2014 the Spanish versions of the General Self-Efficacy Scale (GSE), Form C of the Multidimensional Health Locus of Control Scale (MHLC-C), the Hong Psychological Reactance Scale (HPRS), the Drug Attitude Inventory (DAI-10), and a questionnaire including socio-demographic and clinical variables. Results: The GSE scale attained high internal consistency. Principal component analysis produced a general one-component solution. This structure accounted for more than 50% of the common variance. Further analyses yielded significant results with health locus of control dimensions, attitudes toward psychiatric treatment, age, and affective psychological reactance, but not with other socio-demographic or clinical variables. Conclusions: The structure of the General Self-efficacy Scale is unidimensional, homogenous and positively related to the constructs examined. The scale is a reliable and valid measure of the perception of self-efficacy in psychiatric outpatient care.