Student Self-Efficacy and Gender-Personality Interactions

Abstract

Abstract

The present study reveals that female students have significantly lower self-efficacy level and self-efficacy strength than their male peers in a course in Principles of Economics. This general conclusion does not hold for all personality types.

The general conclusion of lower self-efficacy level in economics for female students compared to those of their male peers does only exist for female intuition and feeling (NF) and intuition and thinking students (NT) but not for the female sensing and perceiving student (SP). Furthermore, the result is revealing that the significant higher self-efficacy level for male students does only exist for male intuition and thinking students (NT) and not for male NF and SP students.

Female students have significantly lower self-efficacy strength than their male peers. This does only exist for female intuition and thinking (NT) and sensing and perceiving (SP) students, but not for female NF students. The general result that male students have significantly higher self-efficacy strength than their female peers, does only encompass male intuition and thinking (NT) students and not the male SP and NF students.

This study tells us that we should be cautions to conclude that self-efficacy is uniformly affected by gender. Gender-personality interactions do matter.