Development And Validation Of A Short Form Of The College-Going Self-Efficacy Scale

Social Cognitive Career Theory is a useful framework for understanding educational attainment and reducing educational inequities. A key construct for middle and high school students is college-going self-efficacy. The College-Going Self-Efficacy Scale (CGSES) has been used to measure secondary students' confidence in their abilities to attend and persist in post-secondary education, but with 30-items, it may be too lengthy for use with other measures in SCCT-grounded research in school settings. Using two independent samples of rural Appalachian high school students, we develop and validate the College-Going Self-Efficacy Scale-Short Form (CGSES-SF). This 14-item measure retains the full breadth of content from the original CGSES, demonstrates measurement equivalence across gender and prospective college generation status, and demonstrates good reliability and validity in these samples. Suggestions for future use of the CGSES-SF are provided.