Assessing the relational competence as the core dimension of social worker’s perceived self-efficacy through the Rasch Model

Abstract

Perceived self-efficacy is concerned with people’s beliefs in their capabilities to succeed in specific situations and can play a major role in how one approaches goals, tasks, and challenges. There is no all-purpose measure of perceived self-efficacy but it is necessary to derive specific scales for specific contexts. This paper presents the structure of a self-efficacy scale developed for social workers. Using the Rating Scale Model as measurement model, an objective measurement of the social workers perceived self-efficacy is produced and analyzed. The differential item functioning analysis was performed in order to determine if the test questions were fair with respect of some population characteristics.