Psychometric validation of the Self-Efficacy for Advocacy Scale: Assessment across ecological domains and social...

We present the new Self-Efficacy for Advocacy Scale (SEAS), which addresses a critical gap in the literature by providing an assessment of self-efficacy (confidence) for a variety of different advocacy behaviors across multiple ecological domains and diverse social justice issues. The SEAS is designed to serve as an outcome measure, mediator, and moderator within diverse community-based research and practice, such as participatory community action research, service-learning pedagogy (especially critical service-learning), and other advocacy-related experiential learning. After reviewing the major theoretical and pedagogical frameworks guiding our research, we report evidence of psychometric validation for the SEAS. Through four studies with undergraduate research participants, we provide evidence of internal consistency, convergent validity, discriminant validity, sensitivity to intervention effects, and criterion-related validity for the SEAS. In a fifth study, we used a hybrid of empirical and rational psychometric approaches to create a sample SEAS short-form, while also providing psychometric validation (internal consistency, convergent validity, discriminant validity) for it. We discuss limitations of our research thus far (e.g., need for more cross-validation research), delineate specific recommendations for future research, and discuss implications for practitioners.