affective states. Individuals with higher self-efficacy for a given task are more likely to engage in that task and persevere when faced with difficulty. For students with a history of low writing skills, such as students with EBD and LD, improving their self-efficacy is a key goal of instruction. Self-efficacy is very task specific. Therefore, when designing a self-efficacy measure, it is important to tie it to a particular task rather than ask broad questions about a given domain. Bandura (2006) makes several additional recommendations for constructing a self-efficacy scale: (1) Use the rather than the relevant phrase, “can do,” “will do;” (2) conceptually analyze domains of functioning; (3) include items that represent varying levels of task difficulty; and (4) use a response scale that ranges from 0 (cannot do it at all) to 100 (highly certain can do it). However, a 0 to 100 response scale can be difficult for students with disabilities to interpret and may hinder their ability to more accurately report their beliefs. Measures of self-efficacy have been used throughout the past 25 years in SRSD research to demonstrate an increase in self-efficacy for writing as a result of instruction (Harris & Graham, 2003). However, the self-efficacy measure that is typically used in SRSD studies, which by and large focus on elementary-age students with LD, have not yielded useful information in recent studies of adolescents with EBD (e.g., Mastropieri et al., 2009; Mastropieri et al., 2010). This current measure, developed by Graham and Harris, consists of 12 items, which students rate on a Likert-type scale from 1 to 4 (1=very different from me, 2 = different from me, 3 = like me, and 4 = a lot like me). Examples of items is include: “When my class asked to write my paper is one of the like to write outside of and do not like best,” “I school,” “I to This self-efficacy measure may not be appropriate for adolescents with EBD for write.” several reasons: (a) it was designed for elementary-aged students, not adolescents; (b) it is not
affective states. Individuals with higher self-efficacy for a given task are more likely to engage in that task and persevere when faced with difficulty. For students with a history of low writing skills, such as students with EBD and LD, improving their self-efficacy is a key goal of instruction. Self-efficacy is very task specific. Therefore, when designing a self-efficacy measure, it is important to tie it to a particular task rather than ask broad questions about a given domain. Bandura (2006) makes several additional recommendations for constructing a self-efficacy scale: (1) Use the phrase, “can do,” rather than “will do;” (2) conceptually analyze the relevant domains of functioning; (3) include items that represent varying levels of task difficulty; and (4) use a response scale that ranges from 0 (cannot do it at all) to 100 (highly certain can do it). However, a 0 to 100 response scale can be difficult for students with disabilities to interpret and may hinder their ability to more accurately report their beliefs. Measures of self-efficacy have been used throughout the past 25 years in SRSD research to demonstrate an increase in self-efficacy for writing as a result of instruction (Harris & Graham, 2003). However, the self-efficacy measure that is typically used in SRSD studies, which by and large focus on elementary-age students with LD, have not yielded useful information in recent studies of adolescents with EBD (e.g., Mastropieri et al., 2009; Mastropieri et al., 2010). This current measure, developed by Graham and Harris, consists of 12 items, which students rate on a Likert-type scale from 1 to 4 (1=very different from me, 2 = different from me, 3 = like me, and 4 = a lot like me). Examples of items include: “When my class is asked to write my paper is one of the best,” “I like to write outside of school,” and “I do not like to write.” This self-efficacy measure may not be appropriate for adolescents with EBD for several reasons: (a) it was designed for elementary-aged students, not adolescents; (b) it is not
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