Relations among perceived self-efficacy, self-esteem, and school achievement

The present research explored empirically the factorial dimensions of self-efficacy and self-esteem and associations among self-esteem, self-efficacy, and scholastic achievement as measured in 151 subjects (M age= 13.4 yr.). Five factors emerged from factorial analysis: two factors reflected the self-esteem feelings (and were, respectively, named as self-referential self-esteem and comparative self-esteem). The remaining three factors reflected the self-efficacy beliefs in the three different scholastic domains considered, linguistic-literary, logical-mathematical, and technical-practical. All self-efficacy scores were significantly correlated with scholastic achievement while no associations between self-esteem scores and scholastic performance were found. Nevertheless, self-efficacy and self-esteem dimensions shared some common aspects. In particular, each different self-esteem factor showed different magnitudes of association with domain-specific self-efficacy beliefs.