Evolving Patterns of Self-Efficacy for Clinical Tasks Among Speech-Language Pathology Graduate Students

The purpose of this study was to investigate the self-efficacy levels in a group of speech-language pathology graduate students for a set of clinical tasks across a set of domains of clinical practice during the first and fourth semesters of their graduate training.

Sixty speech-language pathology graduate students at a single university participated: 26 students were enrolled in face-to-face courses, and 34 were enrolled in a distance learning program. They completed a custom-made self-efficacy scale at the beginning and at the end of their first semester of graduate school and again during the fourth semester. The self-efficacy scale was administered as a Qualtrics survey, with participants rating 14 clinical skills for 12 domains of clinical practice. The participants also provided the number of their evaluation and treatment practicum hours. Descriptive statistics and mixed-effects regression models were used to analyze the data.

In their first semester of clinical and classroom experiences, the students generalized their experiences to express high self-efficacy for all of the disorder categories. A year later, their additional clinical and classroom experiences resulted in focused areas of higher self-efficacy and areas of self-efficacy lower than at the end of the first semester of graduate school.

Self-efficacy increased with time in the graduate program across all of the domains of clinical practice. However, these students needed more than clinical exposure for the self-efficacy gains. The combination of classroom learning, clinical exposure, and clinical feedback seems to have driven the increase.