Study of the Psychometric Properties of the Social Self-Efficacy Scale with Spanish Adolescents by Gender, Age and Family Socioeconomic Level

Abstract

Social self-efficacy has been shown to be a key resource for adolescents’ social experiences with peers and a predictor of prosocial behaviour among adolescents. However, differences by gender, age and socioeconomic level have previously been found in social self-efficacy. The objective of this study is to assess the psychometric properties of the subscale of social self-efficacy from the Self-Efficacy Questionnaire for Children (SEQ-C) developed by Muris (2001) in a representative sample of Spanish adolescents while considering gender, age and socioeconomic level differences. In general, the results showed good psychometric properties and a one-dimensional structure with high internal consistency, adequate explained variance and evidence of external validity for the subscale. Furthermore, the invariance analysis demonstrated that the social self-efficacy subscale shows no bias when used with populations of adolescents who differ by gender, age and socioeconomic level. The results indicate that the Spanish version of the social self-efficacy subscale of the SEQ-C is an adequate measurement instrument for assessing adolescents’ perception of their own social skills.

The Social Self-Efficacy Scale for Spanish and Portuguese (13–18-Year-Olds) Adolescents: Psychometric Properties and Measurement Invariance

“…Finally, with regards to the associations of social self-efficacy with perceived friend support and health-related quality of life, results revealed good criterion-related validity evidence for the global and segmented samples, showing similar associations—significant and positive—as in prior research. The literature notes that high social self-efficacy predicts a satisfactory quality of life in adolescents, promoting their health and well-being (Andretta & McKay, 2020; Haraldstad et al, 2019; Otto et al, 2017), and is positively associated with the perception of friend support (Salado et al, 2022).…”