The purpose of this longitudinal study was to examine the progressive changes in the assessment of self-efficacy by measuring the PTSE scale and NGSE scale once a year in a cohort of Japanese physical therapy students.
A cohort of undergraduate students (n=53) was surveyed once a year, over a 4-year period, using the Physical Therapist Self-Efficacy (PTSE) Scale for Clinical Reasoning and the New General Self-Efficacy (NGSE) Scale. Data analysis was carried out using repeated measures analysis of variance followed by multiple comparison tests and statistical significance was set at 0.05.
The mean ± SD of the PTSE scale was 15.34 ± 4.95 (1st year), 15.57 ± 4.04 (2nd year), 14.17 ± 4.12 (3rd year), and 14.00 ± 5.14 (4th year). Data analysis revealed significant differences in the PTSE scale using repeated measures analysis of variance (p = 0.02). There was also a significant difference between the data from the second year and the third year (p = 0.01). The mean ± SD of the NGSE scale was 27.77 ± 4.94 (1st year), 27.93 ± 5.71 (2nd year), 28.30 ± 5.80 (3rd year), and 27.89 ± 5.71 (4th year). There was no significant difference in the NGSE scale using repeated measures analysis of variance (p = 0.82).
For both PTSE and NGSE scale, a higher score represents a better performance in self-evaluation. The results of the PTSE scale obtained in this study showed an unexpected finding, with lower values in third-year students than in second-year students. This may be because as students’ progress through the academic years, they gain more clinical experience and are able to understand the complexity of clinical reasoning more realistically, which may lead to more conservative self-assessments. In other words, improved self-awareness may have led to lower scores in their self-evaluation for PTSE. In contrast, first- and second-year students may have been overconfident due to the Dunning-Kruger effect from a lack of actual clinical experience. Since students in their third-year curriculum were exposed to advanced clinical training (12 weeks in total), this may have resulted in a more realistic perception of their own self-efficacy. By comparison, general self-efficacy measured by the NGSE scale was a more stable characteristic that was less affected by specific educational experiences in their academic curriculum over their four years.
While the NGSE scale is stable, the results from our study suggest that the PTSE scale may fluctuate as students’ progress through their studies and encounter complex clinical challenges. Perhaps additional support and interventions are needed to help students maintain a more realistic perception of their own PTSE scale as they progress through the academic years, especially during their first and second years.
New General Self-Efficacy Scale
Physical therapy students
