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Evidence Base Home » Social Cohesion and Social Integration » Community and political engagement can lead to self-efficacy or perceived ability to affect change in ones life

Articles in Community and political engagement can lead to self-efficacy, or perceived ability to affect change in one's life.

  • Workers in jobs with high demands and low level of worker control over the decisions leading to those demands show more heart disease and other conditions.

    North FM, Syme SL, Feeney A, Shipley M, Marmot M. 1996. Psychosocial work environment and sickness absence among British civil servants: the Whitehall study. American Journal of Public Health 86(3):332-340.

  • Self-efficacy levels predict preventive practices. For example, adolescents with high self-efficacy around communicating about HIV and using a condom were more likely to use condoms and have fewer lifetime sexual partners. And environmental-change self efficacy (belief that one can find and create environments that support physical activity) had a strong relationship with levels of physical activity.

    Ryans GJ, Dzewaltowski DA. 2002. Comparing the relationships between different types of self-efficacy and physical activity in youth. Health Education and Behavior 29(4):491-504.
    Hoschneider SOM, Alexander CS. 2002. Social and psychological influences on HIV preventive behaviors of youth in Haiti. Journal of Adolescent Health 33(1):31-40.

  • Increasing self-efficacy is a key to encouraging behavior change of all kinds.

    Bandura A. 1997. Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. New York: W.H. Freeman and Company.

  • Exercise self-efficacy and perceived exercise control were significantly associated with physical activity level of the elderly.

    Harris TJ, Owen CG, Victor CR, Adams R, Cook DG. 2009. What factors are associated with physical activity in older people, assessed objectively by accelerometry? British Journal of Sports Medicine 43(6): 442-450.

  • High levels of self-efficacy—i.e. people’s judgments of their capabilities to organize and to execute courses of action required to attain designated types of performances --and outcome-efficacy—i.e. people’s estimation that a given behavior will lead to a certain outcome —were contributing factors for more active public participation in planning workshops for community landscape development in Switzerland.

    Hoppner C, Frick J, Buchecker M. 2008. What drives people's willingness to discuss local landscape development? LANDSCAPE RESEARCH 33(5): 605-622.

  • The efficacy gap negatively predicts collective action. Individuals were more likely to disengage from collaborative action when their perceived influence were far from their desired level of influence.

    McCluskey MR, Deshpande S, Shah, DV, MeLeod DM. 2004. The efficacy gap and political participation: When political influence fails to meet expectations. International Journal of Public Opinion Research 16(4): 437-455