Career Self-Efficacy Theory:

Back to the Future

Nancy E. Betz
The Ohio State University

Gail Hackett
Arizona State University

This article begins by reviewing the scientific origins of research on career self-
efficacy, highlighting its original development as a means of understanding the
career development of women and discussing its development through the years
into what is now, along with its extension as social cognitive career theory, a widely
applicable major approach to the understanding and facilitation of the career
development process. Concerns about current research efforts are discussed. The
first is the tendency of researchers to overlook the fact that the concept of self-
efficacy must be linked to a specific behavioral domain to have meaning. As a
corollary, measures of self-efficacy expectations must be developed with careful
and exact specification of the behavioral domain in question. Detailed suggestions
are provided for the construction of such measures. A second major concern is the
lack of familiarity of many researchers with the theory that underlies this work, in
particular, Bandura’s theory and its elaborations. The article praises the extensive
research attention given to these exceedingly useful theories (self-efficacy and
social cognitive) and suggests that more careful attention to the theoretical under-
pinnings and issues of conceptualization and measurement would be beneficial.

Keywords: career self-efficacy, self-efficacy theory, Bandura’s theory, social

cognitive theory, career assessment

Our interest in the applications of Albert Bandura’s (1977a, 1986, 1997) self-
efficacy theory to career development and assessment began in 1980. At that
time, Nancy Betz had begun a research program examining barriers to women’s
pursuit of careers in math and the sciences and had focused on the concept of
math anxiety. Math anxiety, we knew, was more prevalent among women (see
Betz, 1978), representing as it did societal stereotypes of women’s inferiority in
math and technical domains of study. Gail Hackett, also on the faculty at Ohio
State, came with a research background in cognitive behavioral interventions

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Nancy E. Betz, Department of Psychology, The
Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210-1222; e-mail: betz.3@osu.edu.

JOURNAL OF CAREER ASSESSMENT, Vol. 14 No. 1, February 2006  –11

DOI: 10.1177/1069072705281347
© 2006 Sage Publications


   JOURNAL OF CAREER ASSESSMENT / February 2006

based in social learning theory, had worked as a career counselor, and wanted to
apply her theoretical and research expertise to women’s career development.
When talking one day about our mutual interests, Gail brought up Albert
Bandura’s (1977a) self-efficacy theory, then a major new development in social
learning theory (Bandura, 1977b). We both realized the huge relevance of self-
efficacy theory to the understanding of the career development of women in
general and to women’s underrepresentation in scientific and technical careers
in particular. Emphasizing as it did the key role of cognitive appraisals of abilities
and the malleability of those cognitive appraisals, self-efficacy theory presented
a way to understand and integrate a host of factors known to influence women’s
career choices; we immediately started to work together to outline a theoretical
statement and a series of empirical projects.
More specific to the research on math anxiety, higher levels of self-efficacy
are postulated to lead to “approach” versus “avoidance” behavior, and we could
see the usefulness of conceptualizing women’s underrepresentation in math as a
problem of low expectations of math efficacy as well as one of math anxiety. More
important, the concept of self-efficacy had built within it an empirically derived
theory of its etiology as well as direct intervention implications based on the
four major sources of efficacy information. The four sources of efficacy informa-
tion, now widely known and cited, are performance accomplishments (enactive
mastery experiences), vicarious learning (modeling), physiological and affective
states (emotional arousal, e.g., anxiety), and verbal persuasion (encouragement;
Bandura, 1997). Self-efficacy theory is based on a model of triadic (cognitive,
affective, biological) influences and ongoing reciprocal determinism, whereby
the sources of efficacy information lead to the initial development of efficacy
expectations and also interact complexly over time to influence and shape both
self-efficacy and performance (Bandura, 1977a, 1997). Anxiety, in this model,
is a consequence of weak and low efficacy, but it can be part of the chain of
causal influences; anxiety, influenced by low or weak efficacy, may subsequently
undermine performance as well as efficacy estimates. Thus, although anxiety was
a useful construct, self-efficacy theory was more comprehensive in building into
the theory the intervention as well as the understanding of the complex etiology
and consequences of the problem.
Thus began an incredibly fruitful program of research, a program that almost
immediately attracted many other vocational and counseling researchers. As of
January 2005, our initial theoretical article, Hackett and Betz (1981), which laid
out in some detail the implications of self-efficacy theory for women’s career
development, has been cited 307 times. Our initial empirical article, Betz and
Hackett (1981), wherein we conducted the initial test of our hypotheses and
developed the first measures specifically focused on a form of career-related self
efficacy, has been cited 279 times. (We should note that we alternated first author-
ship throughout our collaboration. None of our articles can be considered the
work of one more than the other of us). Subsequently we produced a number of
joint empirical and conceptual publications (see, e.g., Hackett & Betz, 1995, for
 Betz, Hackett / CAREER SELF-EFFICACY THEORY  

an overview) as well as branched out separately and with other researchers into
various related areas. By 1991, the research on self-efficacy applications to career
development was sufficiently vigorous for Borgen (1991) to identify these two
seminal articles among the 20 milestones of the previous 20 years. Not only has
our work been cited many times but we are proud to say that studies of career self-
efficacy theory now number in the several hundreds, and a major career theory,
social cognitive career theory (Lent, 2005; Lent, Brown, & Hackett, 1994, 2000),
has built on our initial work.
Although our original application of Bandura’s (1977a) theory focused on its
use in understanding women’s career development, the theory is now viewed
as a key concept in understanding career development in general as well as the
career development of specific groups, for example, people of color (Byars &
Hackett, 1998; Flores & O’Brien, 2002; Gloria & Hird, 1999; Hackett & Byars,
1996; Tang, Fouad, & Smith, 1999), elderly persons (Cousins, 1997), people with
disabilities (Luzzo, Hitchings, Retish, & Shoemaker, 1999), and female offenders
(Chartrand & Rose, 1996). It is safe to say that nearly all individuals have some
behavioral areas where they lack confidence in their abilities. In many cases,
these areas of perceived inadequacy may limit the range of career options or the
success with which desired career options are achieved.
There are at least a couple of lessons about scholarly inquiry to be learned from
the productive results of this collaboration. First, it illustrates what can happen
when two or more scholars whose knowledge bases differ begin to collaborate in
addressing a particular problem, in our case women’s career development. When
a Minnesota trait-factor psychologist (Betz) and a Penn State cognitive behaviorist
(Hackett) not only talked to each other but listened, the opportunity to contribute
to knowledge increased greatly. Interestingly, our story also reflects the rapproche-
ment of what Cronbach (1957) long ago called “the two disciplines of scientific
psychology,” the experimental (Hackett) and correlational (Betz) traditions. The
ultimate whole was worth far more than the sum of the parts.
Second, this work illustrates the importance of looking to theory from other
areas of psychology for insights regarding the phenomena we are interested in. In
essence, we borrowed a major theory from developmental and social psychology
(Bandura, 1977a, 1997b) and applied it to an important area of counseling and
vocational psychology, that of career choice and development. Third, our work
illustrated the utility of careful attention to measurement of constructs—one of
the contributions our work has made is that of measures of career self-efficacy
constructs. The huge degree of research activity in this area can be attributed in
part to the increasing availability of high-quality measures.

Troubling Trends in Research and Assessment

Despite all the positive things that have come out of this work, a number of
trends concern us. Many of these have to do with researchers using the theory
   JOURNAL OF CAREER ASSESSMENT / February 2006

without full understanding of its meaning and implications, and even without
seemingly reading and absorbing the original work. Nothing is so irritating,
frankly, as seeing ourselves quoted wrongly—the most blatant example being an
author’s obvious failure to actually read the work he or she cites. We have seen
too many instances, just as one example, of mis-citations such as referring to our
original theoretical/conceptual paper (Hackett & Betz, 1981) as if it were an
empirical piece and citing the empirical piece (Betz & Hackett, 1981) as if it were
the theory piece. It appears that many doing work on career-related self-efficacy
do not thoroughly immerse themselves in and understand the literature.
More fundamental, too many researchers do not appear to fully understand the
theoretical context in which they are working. Self-efficacy is a cognitive appraisal
or judgment of future performance capabilities, not a trait concept. Therefore,
self-efficacy must be measured against some type of behavior (Bandura, 1997,
2005). As stated by Bandura, “The efficacy belief system is not a global trait but a
differentiated set of self-beliefs linked to distinct realms of functioning” (Bandura,
2005, p. 1). Thus, unless and until the behavior domain of interest is carefully
defined and delineated, assessment cannot proceed. We often receive requests for
a measure of “self-efficacy,” clearly indicating the inquirer’s lack of understanding
of the concept. The question is, self-efficacy for what? There is no entity called
“career self-efficacy” except as an umbrella term for self-efficacy beliefs with
respect to possible career-related domains of behavior that could be postulated.
The assessment of perceived self-efficacy derives from the career researcher’s
or career counselor’s interest in a specific behavioral domain—the researcher/
counselor must believe that self-efficacy expectations with respect to occupations,
mathematics, behaviors reflecting the domains of Holland’s (1997) theory, or the
process of career decision making, as examples, are important to the overall pro-
cess of career development. When the researcher becomes interested in a domain
for which no appropriate measure of perceived self-efficacy exists, then she or he
must define the domain, especially with reference to its important constituent
behaviors, so that self-efficacy with reference to that domain can be assessed.
In measuring self-efficacy expectations, as with measuring any psychological
variable, the most important step is the initial definition of the construct of inter-
est (Bandura, 2005). Construct-oriented scale construction begins with a careful,
specific, yet comprehensive definition of the domain of behavior of interest, for
example, mathematics or career decision making. Note that as with any construct
of interest, there is no one correct definition. For example, when we set out to
measure “self-efficacy for mathematics,” our initial problem was in defining the
kind of mathematics on which we should focus (Betz & Hackett, 1983; Hackett,
1985). We were interested in mathematics self-efficacy related to academic and
career choices, so we began with identifying three realms of behavior that might
capture elements of the process of moving into math/science careers, namely,
math tasks, math majors, and mathematics-related occupations. We could then
assess self-efficacy with regard to those areas of mathematics performance. Later,
it became clear that everyday mathematics tasks were not sufficiently discrimina-
 Betz, Hackett / CAREER SELF-EFFICACY THEORY  

tive to be helpful in our research, so we dropped that aspect of the assessment

of self-efficacy for mathematics performance. When we became interested in
examining the career adjustment of women, the task of defining relevant behav-
ioral domains became extremely complex and challenging. Over the years we
have probably spent more time attending to the definitions of the performance
domains and measurement issues than we have spent specifically examining the
construct and its implications for interventions (Betz & Hackett, 1987; Hackett,
Betz, & Doty, 1985).
Another good example of the importance of specifying the domain of behavior
prior to self-efficacy assessment can be found in Taylor and Betz’s (1983) initial
foray into the study of career decision making. As they set out to measure career
decision self-efficacy, there were in the literature many possible ways of defining
the competencies required to make good career decisions. Taylor and Betz chose
the theory of career maturity of John O. Crites (Crites, 1978). They took Crites’s
five career choice competencies (self-appraisal, occupational information, goal
selection, planning, and problem solving) as the definition of the domain of
career decisional competencies. They then wrote items that seemed to reflect
each of the five competencies and applied to those items the confidence response
continuum by which Bandura originally defined self-efficacy. Traditional item
analysis procedures were used to select the best items for each subscale, resulting
in the Career Decision Self-Efficacy Scale (Betz, Klein, & Taylor, 1996; Taylor
& Betz, 1983).
Another important aspect of scale construction is that the scale constructor
either should be a subject matter expert him or herself or should collaborate
with subject matter experts in defining the domain of behavior. We get frequent
requests for a measure of self-efficacy expectations for a domain of behavior we
know nothing about—for example, teaching reading or handling children with
developmental disabilities. We always tell the inquirer that although we can pro-
vide some guidelines regarding how to set up a measure of self-efficacy, we have
absolutely no idea how to construct the actual behavioral items for domains about
which we know nothing. Although we are flattered to be thought knowledgeable
in all possible subject matter domains, that is of course not the case.
Following development of a new measure of self-efficacy, traditional methods
of evaluation should be used, including internal consistency or test–retest reli-
ability and construct validity based on such concepts as Cronbach and Meehl’s
(1955) nomological network (see Nunnally & Bernstein, 1994, for more informa-
tion on this concept and its uses). Thus, the applications of self-efficacy theory to
career behavior are theoretically infinite, yet each new application requires both
the ability to carefully define the behavior domain in question and knowledge of
methods of scale construction and evaluation. Because both areas of expertise are
required, collaboration among researchers bringing different areas of competence
may be both necessary and desirable.
A second concern we have, closely related to this central issue of a lack of
grounding in relevant theory, is that many researchers appear to consider social
   JOURNAL OF CAREER ASSESSMENT / February 2006

cognitive career theory (SCCT; Lent, 2005; Lent et al., 1994, 2000) as somehow
independent from self-efficacy theory and research, rather than an attempt to
expand on and incorporate more of the dimensions of Bandura’s recent theoreti-
cal work to the understanding of career behavior. Obviously, because one of us
participated in that theory explication effort, we view SCCT as heuristic and
extremely valuable to our understanding of the complex interrelationships of
influences on career development. This confusion actually harks back to some
earlier confusion in the career literature. Very briefly, there has been a progression
of empirical and theoretical development in Bandura’s work from social learning
theory (Bandura, 1977b) to the expansion of the social learning model to include
not just cognitive variables but self-efficacy as the core construct (Bandura,
1977a), which has now resulted in the most recent iteration of social cognitive
theory (Bandura, 1986, 1997).
However, the various developments in the theory have built on and expanded
on core constructs. Most prominently, self-efficacy remains at the heart of social
cognitive theory (Bandura, 1997). Our earlier work on self-efficacy included
many of the constructs included in SCCT, for example, outcome expectations,
interests, and sources of efficacy information. Thus, SCCT is an expansion of
earlier work on self-efficacy and builds on the same theoretical and empiri-
cal tradition; they are, at least, “kissing cousins.” SCCT is a particular version
of Bandura’s social cognitive theory and how it might be marshaled to better
understand and explore the career domain. SCCT is more comprehensive and
inclusive, but one could equally validly refer to self-efficacy research as work on
social cognitive theory.
A consequence of the failure to fully appreciate the theoretical context in
which SCCT is studied is that many SCCT researchers either ignore the back-
ground sources of self-efficacy information (in other words the model tested starts
with self-efficacy expectations) or postulate some “background affordances” that
have scant relationship to Bandura’s theory, be these acculturation, mother’s edu-
cation, and so on. It is not that these other background affordances do not have
some importance, but the direct implications of Bandura’s theory for the design
of interventions are lost. The models may test SCCT, but their relevance for treat-
ment is forgotten. This is certainly not the case of the authors of SCCT (natu-
rally), but we have the frequent and distressing feeling that many other authors of
SCCT studies have never read an original article by Bandura himself. If they had,
they could not possibly so seriously ignore the richness of his theory.
A third and closely related issue specific to SCCT is that its very comprehen-
siveness may be distracting some researchers from a focus on the nature of the
construct of self-efficacy itself and on its surrounding theoretical network. As is
well known, SCCT (Lent et al., 1994, 2000)) involves a network of variables pos-
tulated to influence career choice goals and actions. The major individual differ-
ences variables in the model are self-efficacy expectations, outcome expectations,
and interests. Other influential variables are “contextual influences proximal to
choice behavior” (supports and barriers) and a priori “person inputs” and “back-
 Betz, Hackett / CAREER SELF-EFFICACY THEORY  

ground contextual affordances” (Lent et al., 1994, p. 93). Although this model
provides a rich array of variables to study, there are frequent misuses in conceptu-
alizing and measuring the variables.
The caution noted above that there is no such thing as “self-efficacy” or “career
self-efficacy” continues to hold even as the self-efficacy construct is embedded
within the comprehensive SCCT model. Likewise there are no such things as
“outcome expectations” or “interests” without reference to specific domains of
behavior. Yet often studies refer to just that—self-efficacy expectations, outcome
expectations, and interests, with no behavioral referent. To repeat ourselves, it is
only when you get to the measures section that a behavioral domain is specified.
You cannot test SCCT without reference to a specific domain of behavior—find-
ing that SCCT describes phenomena in the realm of math and science does not
generalize to the domains of writing or social behavior or mechanical skills.
In actuality, the vast majority of such specific domain tests to date have been
with math/science or engineering domains (e.g., Lent et al., 2003; Lent et al.,
2005). There is very little research on domains other than that, although the work
of Fouad and Smith and their colleagues (e.g., see Fouad, Smith, & Zao, 2002)
has extended the domains studied to social science, English, and art, as well as
math/science. What are needed to test SCCT for one domain of behavior are
parallel measures of self-efficacy, outcome expectations, interests, and choices
(see Fouad et al., 2002). In other words, if we are interested in the prediction
of choice goals in the area of business management, we need measures of self-
efficacy expectations, outcome expectations, and interests relative to that field.
For researchers not skilled in the area of scale construction, this can present a
daunting task or, worse, one that is essentially ignored in favor of generalized or
questionably relevant measures already available.

Summary: Back to the Future

It is gratifying to see so much enthusiasm for research on self-efficacy con-

structs and social cognitive career theory, but in their headlong rush forward
we hope that authors first gain a solid grounding in the work on which this
exciting future is based. Most important, a careful reading of Bandura himself
must lay the groundwork for future research. Attention to defining and assessing
the target behaviors must precede model testing. The future of social cognitive
career theory must remain tied to its theoretical moorings and specific behavioral
­implications.
Given these cautions, we are very pleased that our initial collaboration has
resulted in so much productive work that has enhanced understanding of career
behavior, greatly enriched career theory, and added to the repertoire of counsel-
ing interventions. We are especially pleased to see the articles in this special issue,
which each review an important area of career self-efficacy research. We hope
that readers find these articles as interesting and helpful as we have.
10   JOURNAL OF CAREER ASSESSMENT / February 2006

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