Self-Efficacy for Clinical Tasks Among Speech-Language Pathology Graduate Students

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of the first semester of a speech-language pathology (SLP) graduate program on the level of student self-efficacy for a set of clinical tasks across a variety of communication disorders. Method: In this study, 60 SLP graduate students participated. They were in two sections of a required first-semester course at a single university. They completed a custom-made self-efficacy scale at the beginning and end of their first semester of graduate school. The self-efficacy scale was administered as a Qualtrics survey, with participant ratings of 14 clinical skills for 12 communication disorders. As part of both administrations of the survey, the participants also provided their number of evaluation and treatment observation hours as well as their evaluation and treatment practicum hours. Descriptive statistics and mixed-effects regression models were used to analyze the data. Results: The data indicated that a semester of graduate school and clinical practice increased the students' self-efficacy across all 12 communication disorders. The regression analysis confirmed that all of the clinical tasks differed significantly by when the survey was completed, with the higher self-efficacy scores occurring at the end of the semester. It also revealed that student self-efficacy scores increased by 1 point with each clinical diagnostic hour the students completed. Conclusions: Completing a semester of graduate school resulted in increased self-efficacy in this group of students. The increased self-efficacy spread across a range of disorder types and across a variety of evaluation and treatment tasks.