Self-Efficacy's Impact on Sports and Physical Activity: ITECH5500

This literature review, submitted as ITECH5500 Assignment 2, explores the impact of self-efficacy on sports participation and physical activity. The paper begins with an abstract and introduction, defining self-efficacy as a crucial psychological factor influencing goal achievement and performance. It highlights the four constituents of self-efficacy (performance outcomes, vicarious experiences, verbal persuasion, and physiological feedback) and differentiates it from efficacy. The review then delves into the importance of self-efficacy, distinguishing between individuals with high and low self-efficacy and their respective behaviors. The literature review section analyzes five scientific studies examining self-efficacy in various sports contexts, including soccer, high school athletics, individual vs. team sports, and weightlifting. These studies consistently demonstrate a strong link between self-efficacy and physical activity levels across different age groups. The review also acknowledges the need for more detailed research to understand self-efficacy's influence on different phases of sport involvement.

ITECH5500
Professional Research and Communication
Assignment 2
Self-efficacy
Submitted by: Subhash Shrestha (30344385)
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Submission Date:
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Contents
Abstract.........................................................................................................3
Introduction...................................................................................................4
Need to add portion
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Abstract
Self-efficacy and its impact on all aspects of life has been object of research for
a long time. The purpose of this literature review is to identify scientific studies
about how self-efficacy influences participation in sport and physical activity
levels among the broader society. After a thorough analyses of online and
university databases five articles were identified to give an overview about the
topic. Furthermore, this literature review examines differences and similarities
of the methods used in the studies and compare their results. The five papers
analyze the impact of self-efficacy in different environments (team and
individual sports) on people of different age groups. Taken all studies together,
self-efficacy seems to be strongly linked to sport participation and physical
activity of all age groups.
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Introduction
Person life influences by the product of varieties of influential things. Self-
efficacy is a one the main product of psychological things, which plays crucial
position in person life. Self-efficacy is a confidence, which lead to face
difficulties and achieving the desire goal. (Bandura, 1995) explains that it
"refers to beliefs in one's capabilities to organize and execute the courses of
action required to manage prospective situations" (p. 2). Persons with high self-
efficacy are able to plan effectively and successfully in completion of a task
(Bandura, 1977). This type of person understands his/her believes and have
capabilities to achieve the goal in any complex situation. In addition to this, a
person with high self-efficacy does not worry about the task even the task is
highly complicated. While a person with low self-efficacy run away from the
complex task, and have low belief in their self-confidence and abilities.
Consequently, this drive the person to unable of execution of goal in their life
challenges.
According to (Gecas, 2003), people behave in the way that executes their initial
beliefs; thus, self-efficacy functions as a self-fulfilling prophecy. Suppose a first
person with normal capability and experience in building of presentation slides
for presentation, but has high confidence and belief, which gives the power to
make excellent presentation slides for presentation. On the other hand, the
second person with high numbers of experience and great talent in creating of
presentation slides for presentation, but has low confidence lacks him/her in
making of quality presentation slides for presentation. Because of second person
with low self-efficacy, lacks the motivation and interest to build slides for
presentation, depict the unable of execution of task. But the first person who has
high self-efficacy, rise up the motivation to complete task without worrying of
difficulties, ultimately, this development the career and process in life to
achieve excellence.
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Self-efficacy highlights the impacts of every decision and confidence of person.
One such example is student confident in understanding of lesson, problem
solving, and performance in difficult task. Therefore, another case like, self-
efficacy beliefs influence not only physical proficiency, as (Bandura, 1997)
notes, however, it effects on prediction of opponent team, handling pressure,
making of quick decision. Such as, a player having an effective performance in
team determines achievement of goal.
Four constituents are use to judgment of self-efficacy: performance outcomes,
vicarious experiences, verbal persuasion, and physiological feedback (Bandura,
1977).
Performance outcomes: This depends on the performance result of previous task
whether positive or negative outcome. If the result was positive the performer
likely to execute the positive performance in future task where as negative
performance makes the adverse affect on his/her task performing. Therefore,
this causes the failure of task in future.
Vicarious experiences: A person can watch another perform and then compare
their competence with the other’s competence (Redmond, 2010). For example, a
person succeed in their goal can be model for the other person. Therefore, the
other person can learn from this outcome and enhance the self-efficacy in high
level. However, if the person has a partner with negative and failure of case in
past then this lower the person belief and their self-efficacy.
Verbal persuasion: According to (Redmond, 2010), self-efficacy is also
influenced by encouragement and discouragement pertaining to an individual’s
performance or ability to perform.
For instance, a coach telling to his team that he believes his team in winning the
game. This type verbal persuasion raises the self-efficacy of each team member
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to perform in high level. While if the coach tells the player about his low
believe on his team, then this lead to lower of self-efficacy of team.
States of physiology (physiological feedback): This type of state defines the
physiological effect on person performance, which can be visible to his/her
physical body. For example, if a person giving the hard examination then the
effect of exam reveals on his body like by facial expression, sweat and fear.
Therefore, this lead the lower the self-efficacy but if person bypass the hard
moment easily then he/she can deal the challenge with high motivation with
high level of self-efficacy. Thus, controlling anxiety has the positive effect on
self-efficacy level.Description on self - efficacy:-
The term self - efficacy has many definitions according to the
different theories.
 According to the social cognitive theory Psychologist Albert
Bandura has defined
self-efficacy as the peoples personal
assessment or believes about own ability to succeed in getting
a particular
goal or in any particular situation.
 According to social learning theory it may be defined as the
learning or developing of a skill within a social group. It totally
based on the interaction of an individual in the group with
others and they can learn many things from each other.
 According to Self-concept theory self – efficacy is how will
people explain and recognize their own presence with the help
of their own believes and resources. They will make some
change based on self-learning from their success or failure.
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 According to Attribution theory self – efficacy defined as self-
confidence of a person will always affected by the success and
failure.
So, overall self – efficacy may be defined ae the self – believes
of a person about his own capabilities may lead to succeed in
achieving a future goal or.
Why self – efficacy is important?
Self – efficacy is very important for every human being because
it affects the people thinking, behavior, feelings and so many
things about themselves. There are 2 types of people one who
have high sense of self- efficacy and other who have low sense
of self – efficacy.
The people who have high self – efficacies -
 Are more interested and focused in their every activity.
 They are quick learners and easily overcome to their
mistake which they did in past.
 They always take challenges from any hard tasks.
The people who have low self –efficacies –
 Can easily loss faith and believes and have doubt on own
capabilities.
 Also suffer with stress and depression.
 Always choose easy tasks instead of difficult tasks and
they have more negative thoughts instead of focusing on
their goals.
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Moreover, the people who have high self – efficacy get
learn more as comparison to people who have low self –
efficacy while ability levels are same in both types of
people. Because they have different believes and strength
about themselves.
How self – efficacy differs from efficacy?
Efficacy is a method of achieving something, to give the
results. For example in medicines scientists ran a series of
tests to check the efficacy of drugs while self – efficacy is a
personal judgment which believes in someone efficacy to
achieving a target and get positive result.
Major factors that contributes to self – efficacy
1. Performance experience: - if you achieved any goal
that means you focused on your task and did well. If
sometimes you failed in your task but you never give
up and tried again to do well.
2. Verbal – persuasion: - this tells us what people think
about what they believe you are and they cannot do
anything like you.
3. Imaginal performance: - it shows that when you do
something and imagine about your success and failure.
4. Affective states and physical sensations: - sometimes
your success and failure also depends on negative and
positive moods
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Literature Review
Self-efficacy in sports is a widely discussed topic among researchers. In no
other part of life they believe in one´s abilities can be examined as good as in
sport with its rich history of successful athletes who believed in themselves and
achieved great things. However, a great deal of literature has examined the
effects of self-efficacy on the physical activity habits of every-day people, away
from the performance of elite athletes. The motivation of the researchers was to
produce valuable information for recreation planners to increase participation in
sport and enhance overall health of the population (Cetinkalp & Turksoy, 2011).
(Cetinkalp & Turksoy, 2011)Examined how self-efficacy influences the motivation of
males to participate in soccer. Goal of this study was to understand self-efficacy
and gain knowledge of how to get more children involved in sport. Each player
´s self-efficacy level was determined through (Schwarzer & Jerusalem,
2010)scale cited in (Cetinkalp & Turksoy, 2011). The authors then tried to
predict each participant’s participation level according to the generated data.
The findings of the study were that self-efficacy was strongly linked to
individual energy and activity levels as well as team affiliation. Even though the
researchers found no direct link between self-efficacy and participation, they
stressed that the higher a players individual activity level was the higher was his
participation rate.
(Valois, Umstattd, Zullig, & Paxton, 2008) asked a very similar question but focused on
the relationship between self-efficacy and the physical activity of high school
adolescents. They developed their own self-efficacy scala but, just like
Cetinkalp and Turksov, used questionnaires to collect data about physical levels
and self-efficacy of the participants. The result indicated that a high number of
high school students showed very low activity levels as well as low
participation in sports. At the same time many students showed a low level of
self-efficacy. Valois et al. see a connection between low self-efficacy and low
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participation in sports. However they were not able to determine which causes
what and call for more research to be done on the topic.
(Dinç, 2011) went into a bit more detail and examined the differences of self-
efficacy of people participating in individual sports and people participating in
team sports. The study found that people that participate in team sports show a
higher level of self-efficacy than individual athletes which goes hand in hand
with (Cetinkalp & Turksoy, 2011).Dinc´s research method was similar to the
ones of his fellow researches. He used a well-established self-efficacy scale
(Bing, 2007) and gathered data through questionnaires.
Having had a glance at self-efficacy and its influence on different age groups,
(Gilson & Curnock, 2012) examines the effect of self-efficacy on a particular
sport: weightlifting. Gilson was able to prove the positive effect of self-efficacy
on athlete´s strength. In comparison to the previous researches, Gilson didn’t
only rely on questionnaires for the data collection of the athlete´s performances.
He followed strength developments very precisely by continuously comparing
lifted weight. Just like in the previous papers, Gilson found self-efficacy to be
the most important factor to boost performance. He even suggested athletes who
struggle with one particular weight to decrease the weight by a small proportion
and do a couple of repetitions to quickly increase self-efficacy – after that the
struggling weight should not be a problem anymore.
The presented studies all agreed on self-efficacy to be a leading driver regarding
physical activity levels for all age groups. However, most of the literature
remained rather general and took an universal approach to examine the
correlation between self-efficacy and sport involvement.
More detailed research has to be undertaken to understand how self-efficacy
affects the different phases of sport involvement from early stages to the
maintenance phase (McAuley & Blissmer, 2000). Furthermore, different types
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of activities require different kinds of self-efficacy as (Dinç, 2011)comparison
of self-efficacy for team and individual sports has proven. It will be important to
further these studies and provide information what kind of self-efficacy works
most effectively in the various niches of the dynamic world of sport.
Conclusion
Self-efficacy is research for long time for its impact on various aspects of life. It
is because self efficacy affects the people’s feelings behaviour and thinking.
The paper had reviewed various scientific studies on influence of self-efficacy
in sports participation and physical activity levels. It can be concluded from the
literature review that the self-efficacy functions as a self-fulfilling prophecy. It
increases motivation to participate in the sports like Soccer or physical
activities. It is found to influence the physical proficiency that drives effective
performance and improves health. Self-efficacy is however linked with higher
activity level of an individual which determines the rate of participation, in both
children and adults. It was interesting to found the change in the self-efficacy
when one plays sorts in team and individually. The former had higher level of
self-efficacy. Self efficacy boost performance as it increases strength of the
sports personnel. It can be concluded that self-efficacy in all age groups is
strongly correlated with the sport participation and physical activity.
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References :-
Bandura, A. (1977). Self-efficacy mechanism in human agency. Psychological review, 84(2), 191-
2015.
Bandura, A. (1995). Exercise of personal and collective efficacy in changing societies. Edited by:
Bandura A. Self-efficacy in changing societies. 1-45. Retrieved from
https://books.google.com/books?id=ZL7qN4jullUC&dq=editions
%3AitTbpOYuAYgC&source=gbs_book_other_versions
Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. Macmillan. Retrieved from
http://search.proquest.com.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/docview/619147930?accountid=13158
Cetinkalp, Z. K., & Turksoy, A. (2011). Goal orientation and self-efficacy as predictors of male
adolescent soccer players' motivation to participate. Social Behavior and Personality: an
international journal, 39(7), 925-934.
Dinç, Z. (2011). Social self-efficacy of adolescents who participate in individual and team sports.
Social Behavior and Personality: an international journal, 39(10), 1417-1423.
Gecas, V. (2003). Self-agency and the life course. In Handbook of the life course. Boston, MA:
Springer. doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-306-48247-2_17
Gilson, T. A., & Curnock, L. E. (2012). An examination of athletes' self-efficacy and strength training
effort during an entire off-season. he Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research, 26(2),
443-451.
McAuley, E., & Blissmer, B. (2000). Self-efficacy determinants and consequences of physical
activity. Exerc Sport Sci Rev, 28(2), 85-88.
Redmond, B. F. (2010). Self-efficacy theory: Do I think that I can succeed in my work? Work attitudes
and motivation. The Pennsylvania State University, World Campus. Retrieved from
https://cms.psu.edu
Schwarzer, R., & Jerusalem, M. (2010). The general self-efficacy scale (GSE). Anxiety, Stress, and
Coping,. 329-345.
Valois, R. F., Umstattd, M. R., Zullig, K. J., & Paxton, R. J. (2008). Physical Activity Behaviors and
Emotional Self-Efficacy: Is There a Relationship for Adolescents? Journal of school health,
78(6), 321-327.
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