Self-Efficacy as an Intervening Mechanism between Research Training Environments and Scholarly Productivity

Abstract

Recent research has found that both research training environments and self-efficacy beliefs relate to graduate students' research productivity. Although important, this research has not yet fully explored hypotheses suggesting the specific manner in which the training environment and students' self-efficacy beliefs jointly function in promoting scholarly achievements. Social cognitive formulations suggest a mediating relationship whereby effects of the research training environment on productivity operate at least partly through the intervening mechanism of students' self-efficacy beliefs. A reanalysis of data published earlier in this journal (Phillips & Russell, 1994)found support for the social cognitive mediational hypothesis and also suggested that the training environment may have a more potent influence on women's than on men's research self-efficacy and we productivity. Theoretically, these findings highlight the importance of structuring research training environments to promote greater research self-efficacy. Methodologically, they suggest alternative procedures for determining whether data should be collapsed across sex and other grouping variables in multivariate correlational research.