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Domain-specific vs. domain-general collective efficacy

To develop collective efficacy scales, I believe we should first come up with some specific domains or contexts. As bandura claimed, domain general measures create serious probems such as predictive relevance. Thus, it should be context- and domain-specific, rather than measures assessing global collective confidence. It seems that we are not taking into account this issue. I am not sure what kind of collective efficacy scale we are trying to develop now (I know we have talked about collective efficacy in community settings and etc., but it is still not clear).

Quick summary of items and thoughts on measurement

Hi guys,

I though it would be easier to see the full picture of we've come up with so far, so I went ahead and aggregated all the items and suggestions in one post. Maybe this will help you come up with new ideas.

ITEMS

• that can be started with "I believe/I am confident that..." stem

1. I think I can get people to want to work together to solve a problem we think is important.
2. I am confident that I can clearly and effectively communicate my thoughts and ideas to other members of our group so that they can understand me. 
3. I believe that all members of our group are competent in the group roles assigned to them.
4. I am confident that our group members value different points of view and disagreements as a way to construct a joint understanding of the problem.
5. I think that all members of our group can follow the established and agreed on ground norms.
6. I am confident that our group can set specific goals, and plan and coordinate individual and joint actions to sucsessfully achieve these goals

(I beleive I/our group can) 

7. Agree to decisions that require giving up personal interest 

8. Resolve conflicts when members feel they are not being treated fairly 

9. Prevent disagreements from turning into heated arguments 

10. Get members to share responsibilities 

11. Support each other in times of stress 

12. Bounce back quickly from adverse experiences 

13. Help each other to achieve their personal goals (not sure if it is consistent with group work) 14. Build respect for each other's particular interests 

15. Help each other with work demands 

16. Get members to carry out their responsibilities when they neglect them (very close to item 4) 17. Celebrate group traditions even in difficult times (not sure if it fits) 

18. Serve as a good example for the community (not sure if it fits) 

19. Remain confident during difficult times (not sure in phrasing) 

20. Accept each member's need for independence.

• with barrier phrasing

Rate how how certain you are that you can successfully collaborate with others in the following situations:

     21. When there is disagreement or conflict 

     22. When there is a misunderstanding 

     23. When there is uncertainty

     24. When there are power struggles in relationships

I suggest that you think about the following dimensions of collective efficacy measured by the scale, particularly:

[1] I vs. we component [for example, items 1-2, 15-18 are clearly about the "I" in the group and how "I" can contribute to the success of my group; other items are either about the "we" component or can be attributed to both categories]

[2] at least 3 dimensions of collective efficacy:

a) Communicative/social (effectively managing conflicts, your own emotions, and establishing positive relationships with others)

b) Emotional (effectively managing emotions, e. g., forget quickly about adversive experiences) [

c) Task-related (effectively organizing work process to solve a problem)

They can help us differentiate among different items and create subscales. Below is the table of our items categorized by this principle.

Communicative/social	Emotional	Task-related
1. I think I can get people to want to work together to solve a problem we think is important. 2. I am confident that I can clearly and effectively communicate my thoughts and ideas to other members of our group so that they can understand me.  4. I am confident that our group members value different points of view and disagreements as a way to construct a joint understanding of the problem. 5. I think that all members of our group can follow the established and agreed on ground norms. 7. Agree to decisions that require giving up personal interest  8. Resolve conflicts when members feel they are not being treated fairly  11. Support each other in times of stress  13. Help each other to achieve their personal goals  14. Build respect for each other's particular interests  16. Get members to carry out their responsibilities when they neglect them (very close to item 4) 17. Celebrate group traditions even in difficult times (not sure if it fits) 18. Serve as a good example for the community (not sure if it fits) 20. Accept each member's need for independence. 22. When there is a misunderstanding  23. When there is uncertainty 24. When there are power struggles in relationships	9. Prevent disagreements from turning into heated arguments 11. Support each other in times of stress  12. Bounce back quickly from adverse experiences  19. Remain confident during difficult times (not sure in phrasing)  21. When there is disagreement or conflict	3. I believe that all members of our group are competent in the group roles assigned to them. 6. I am confident that our group can set specific goals, and plan and coordinate individual and joint actions to successfully achieve these goals 7. Agree to decisions that require giving up personal interest  10. Get members to share responsibilities  15. Help each other with work demands  16. Get members to carry out their responsibilities when they neglect them (very close to item 4)

MEASUREMENT

1. Number of points

Mark proposed a great idea of using a 1 to 6 Likert scale without the "neutral" option which would look like this:

1 = not confident at all, 

2 = not confident, 

3 = somewhat not confident, 

4 = somewhat confident, 

5 = confident, 

6 = highly confident.

Anna raised the question of whether we should provide a neutral option at all (and use 7-point scale as a consequence). This is an important question and I'd like to know everybody's opinion. I don't think we need to use "neutral" or "don't know" because we always estimate out efficacy somehow. What do you think, guys?

2. Reversed items

Another thought of mine on that. I found two articles (article 1, article 2) about the ineffectiveness of reversed items. I personally think that reversed items can sometimes be confusing or overwhelming and don't want to use it in our scale. But maybe you can provide arguments proving me wrong?

Goddard and Hoy Six Term Scales

Partially in response to Irina's post, I also wanted to comment on response scaling. While perhaps very effective, I think 100 point scale system is cumbersome to work with. Likewise, a 1 to 5, is perhaps too simplistic. If you have not seen the teacher efficacy CE-scale created by Goddard & Hoy (2003), please have a look at it. Obviously adapted from a Likert type scale, using this six term scale, teachers were able to record levels of agreement ranging from strongly agree, agree, somewhat agree, somewhat disagree, disagree and strongly disagree. I don't know what it is about this particular measure, but it is visually very appealing and not to complex for respondents to record strength of beliefs or in turn to score. Please look it up and let me know what you think?        

Items related to Overcoming Barriers

I tried to come up with some items with barriers that look similar to Bandura's. I am still not sure about these items but I will just share this... I only have 4 items for now, but this kind of format can be a possibility.

A number of situations are described below that can make it hard to collaborate with others. Please rate in each of the blanks on the column how certain you are that you can successfully collaborate with others.

Rate your degree of confidence by recording a number from 0 to 10 using the scale given below:

 0               1              2         3          4             5            6                 7            8             9                 10

Cannot do at all                                    Moderately can do                                      Highly certain can do

When there is disagreement or conflict

When there is a misunderstanding

When there is uncertainty

When there are power struggles in relationships

Perceived Collective Family Efficacy Items

As I mentioned in class last week, I think the scale of Perceived Collective Family Efficacy from Bandura's (2006) guide to constructing self-efficacy scales contains a lot of items that can work for the scale we are trying to build, so I am going to post some of those items here that I have adapted slightly:

1) Agree to decisions that require giving up personal interests
2) Resolve conflicts when members feel they are not being treated fairly
3) Prevent disagreements from turning into heated arguments
4) Get members to share responsibilities
5) Support each other in times of stress
6) Bounce back quickly from adverse experiences
7) Help each other to achieve their personal goals
8) Build respect for each other's particular interests
9) Help each other with work demands
10) Get members to carry out their responsibilities when they neglect them
11) Celebrate group traditions even in difficult times
12) Serve as a good example for the community
13) Remain confident during difficult times
14) Accept each member's need for independence

Scale phrasing and measurement

I'd like to bring up a few issues related to the phrasing of items and scale measurement here. I guess it will be useful to start thinking about them now.

SCALE PHRASING

1. Barriers

Do you think we need to include barriers at all in our phrasing? 

I'm uncertain about this because there are many situation in group work related to positive aspects rather then negative (Michael's item is a good example). And I don't think we can really phrase all of them using barriers. My suggestion would be to come up with the items first and see if it makes sense to insert barriers in them.

2. Reverse phrasing

Do we need to include this and why? 

My understanding is that they are used to check the accuracy and attenrion of respondents. But do we really need to do this?

SCALE MEASUREMENT

- 1-5 scale

- 1-7 scale

- 1-10 scale

- 0 - 100 scale

Which one is better and why?

I'm against 0-100 because I don't believe that 0 is meaningful in this context (we all have self-efficacy, but it can be very-very low) and, as Yeoeun suggested, it might be unreliable in statistical analysis.

I think 1-10 is too differentiated but is better than 0-100 because it doesn't include 0.

1-5 scale is okay for me, but I'm more for 1-7 scale because I believe that it's big enough to differenciate subtle aspects of variation in respondents' attitudes (better than 1-5), but not too cumbersome. There's also evidence from this article.

- "Reliability is lower for scales with only two or three points compared to those with more points, but suggest that the gain in reliability levels off after about 7 points"

- "Validity is higher for scales with a moderate number of points than for scales with fewer, with the suggestion that validity is compromised by especially long scales".

What're your thoughts on this, guys?