An Instrument to Assess Self-Efficacy in Introductory Algorithms Courses

Abstract

We report on the development and validation of an instrument to assess self-efficacy in an introductory algorithms course. The instrument was designed based upon previous work by Ramalingam and Wiedenbeck and evaluated in a multi-institutional setup. We performed statistical evaluations of the scores obtained using this instrument and compared our findings with validated psychometric measures. These analyses show our findings to be consistent with self-efficacy theory and thus suggest construct validity.