One of the affective factors influencing student achievement is self-efficacy, which is defined as one’s belief in his/her capability to perform a specific action successfully (Bandura, 1997). Studies with students at different grade levels revealed significant relationship between self-efficacy and motivation, engagement, anxiety, and self-regulation (Pajares & Graham, 1999; Usher & Pajares, 2008). More significantly, self-efficacy predicts performance better than other variables such as anxiety, previous performance (Pajares & Miller, 1995). 

According to social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1986), self-efficacy develops through interpretation of information from four sources: mastery experience, vicarious experience, social persuasion, and physiological and emotional state. Among these sources, the most powerful one is mastery experience, ones’ own previous experience. However, all of the successful performances may not increase self-efficacy and all failure may not decrease self-efficacy. The contribution of mastery experience depends on how the individual interprets the results of a performance (Bandura, 1997). In addition, task difficulty, effort, and help from others have an influence on shaping self-efficacy. Self-efficacy also develops through vicarious experience, observing performance of others. Pajares (1997) stated that vicarious experiences contribute more to self-efficacy beliefs of people who have less experience. The third source of self-efficacy is verbal or nonverbal persuasions received from others including parents, teachers, and peers. Finally, Physiological and emotional state refers to feelings such as anxiety, boredom, and fatigue before a performance. When people have intimidating thoughts about their ability, their further actions can be influenced by this thought leading to failure in performance (Pajares, 1997). With this respect, controlling stress and negative emotions can be a way to develop self-efficacy beliefs.

Researchers explored the sources of self-efficacy both quantitatively and qualitatively in different domains because of task and domain specific nature of self-efficacy. For example, Lent, Lopez, and Bieschke (1991) developed Sources of Mathematics Self-Efficacy Scale (SMES). Later, Lent, Lopez, Brown, and Gore (1996) developed a scale to measure sources of science self-efficacy, namely Sources of Science Self-Efficacy. In 1998, Hampton developed the Sources of Academic Self-Efficacy Scale. However, these measures have been criticized for measurement problems; i.e., validity and reliability (Usher & Pajares, 2009). Thereby, Usher and Pajares (2009) developed and validated a scale, Sources of Middle School Mathematics Self-Efficacy Scale, to measure sources of self-efficacy in mathematics and their study resulted in consistent findings with the literature. For example, mastery experiences explained most of the variance in self-efficacy beliefs. In the current study, the purpose of the present study was to examine high school students’ self-efficacy beliefs in chemistry and to find out the sources predicting students’ self-efficacy beliefs in chemistry.  

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