Child Perceived Self-Efficacy Scale

Abstract

The Child Perceived Self-Efficacy Scale (CPSES) is a 20-item psychometric self-report instrument engineered to measure agentic self-beliefs among late elementary and early middle school children (predominantly grades 3 through 6, ages 8 to 12). Developed and psychometrically validated by Carl I. Fertman and Brian A. Primack (2009), the instrument operationalizes Albert Bandura‘s theoretical framework of perceived self-efficacy within developmental domains central to youth development, health promotion, and substance abuse prevention. The CPSES measures three distinct, interrelated latent dimensions: Learning-Associated Self-Efficacy (9 items assessing self-regulated academic performance, homework completion, cognitive organization, and classroom attentiveness), Peer-Associated Self-Efficacy (8 items measuring prosocial peer affiliation, social conflict resolution, interpersonal assertiveness, and cooperative group functioning), and Drug-Related Self-Efficacy (3 items assessing youth confidence in resisting peer pressure to smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol, and smoke marijuana). Items are presented along an anchored 5-point Likert-type response scale ranging from 1 (“Not at all Confident”) to 5 (“Very Confident”). Psychometric evaluations demonstrate robust internal consistency, yielding Cronbach’s alpha coefficients of .83 for Learning-Associated Self-Efficacy, .75 for Peer-Associated Self-Efficacy, and .91 for Drug-Related Self-Efficacy. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analytic procedures have confirmed the tripartite structural validity of the measure, showing clear divergence across factors and significant predictive validity regarding academic engagement, social competence, and pediatric substance use initiation. The scale provides educators, clinical child psychologists, school counselors, and prevention scientists with an empirically sound, brief, and developmentally sensitive assessment tool for diagnostic screening, behavioral intervention design, and longitudinal evaluation in primary and secondary educational settings.

Keywords

Child Perceived Self-Efficacy Scale, CPSES, self-efficacy, Bandura social cognitive theory, academic self-efficacy, peer relations, substance use prevention, childhood assessment, psychometrics, drug refusal self-efficacy, behavioral pediatrics

Authors

The Child Perceived Self-Efficacy Scale was created and empirically validated by:

• Carl I. Fertman, PhD, M.B.A. — Associate Professor Emeritus, Department of Health and Physical Activity, School of Education, University of Pittsburgh; Executive Director, Maximizing Adolescent Potential (MAP) Program. Dr. Fertman is a nationally recognized scholar in youth development, student assistance programs, and school health promotion.
• Brian A. Primack, M.D., PhD, Ed.M., M.S. — Professor of Public Health and Medicine; formerly at the Center for Research on Health Care, Division of General Internal Medicine, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Dr. Primack’s research centers on adolescent health behaviors, behavioral epidemiology, media literacy, and youth substance use prevention.

Purpose

The Child Perceived Self-Efficacy Scale was formulated to address a significant developmental and clinical gap in pediatric behavioral assessment. During late childhood and the transition to early adolescence (approximately ages 8 to 12), children encounter escalating cognitive, social, and environmental challenges. In this transitional period, individuals must rapidly develop autonomous executive function skills, navigate increasingly complex peer ecologies, and establish behavioral resistance strategies against early onset substance experimentation. Prior self-efficacy instruments either focused exclusively on adult or adolescent populations, lacked psychometric grounding for late elementary cohorts, or failed to integrate the triadic nexus of academic, social, and substance resistance domains within a single, parsimonious assessment tool.

The primary clinical, educational, and research purposes of the CPSES encompass:

• Early Identification of Behavioral and Academic Vulnerability: The scale enables school psychologists, educational diagnosticians, and clinical child practitioners to pinpoint deficits in academic self-regulation, organizational skills, and study habits before academic decline consolidates into persistent underachievement or school disengagement.
• Targeting Social and Interpersonal Deficits: By isolating peer-associated efficacy beliefs, the CPSES uncovers vulnerabilities in social assertiveness, relational boundary-setting, and peer relationship maintenance, identifying children at elevated risk for peer victimization, social isolation, or maladaptive peer affiliation.
• Screening for Substance Use Vulnerability: The instrument serves as a specialized prevention tool. Research indicates that low refusal self-efficacy during late elementary grades is among the strongest prospective predictors of tobacco, alcohol, and cannabis experimentation during middle school. The CPSES captures these vulnerabilities at a developmental stage when primary prevention programs yield the highest return on investment.
• Program Evaluation and Intervention Benchmarking: The CPSES is widely used as a standardized pre-test and post-test outcome measure for school-wide social-emotional learning (SEL) curricula, student assistance programs, peer mediation initiatives, and evidence-based drug prevention programs (e.g., LifeSkills Training, Project ALERT).

Psychological Construct

The core construct assessed by the CPSES is perceived self-efficacy, defined within cognitive and behavioral science as an individual’s subjective confidence in their operational capabilities to organize, execute, and sustain the courses of action required to produce designated attainments under demanding conditions. Rather than assessing static psychological traits, generalized self-esteem, or global perceived competence, perceived self-efficacy is explicitly domain-differentiated and task-specific. The CPSES organizes this construct into three primary operational sub-constructs:

1. Learning-Associated Self-Efficacy (Items 1–9)

This subscale assesses the child’s subjective judgment of their capability to enact autonomous academic self-regulation and cognitive management. It encompasses cognitive self-instruction, academic delay of gratification, executive organization, and attentional control within instructional settings. Representative components include:

• Academic Task Completion and Timeliness: Confidence in adhering to structured homework routines, meeting designated academic deadlines, and overcoming habitual procrastination (e.g., Item 1: “I can finish my homework assignments by deadlines”).
• Volitional and Effort Regulation: The capacity to mobilize and sustain mental effort in the presence of competing, highly salient distractors (e.g., Item 2: “I can get myself to study when there are other interesting things to do”; Item 9: “I can get myself to do school work”).
• Attentional Focusing and Cognitive Encoding: Subjective mastery over classroom concentration, active note-taking, environmental structuring for quiet study, and working memory recall of classroom instruction and instructional texts (Items 3, 4, 7, and 8).
• Metacognitive Planning: Daily planning, prioritizing assignments, and organizing curricular materials (Items 5 and 6).

2. Peer-Associated Self-Efficacy (Items 10–17)

This dimension captures the child’s perceived competence in forming and maintaining adaptive peer affiliations, exercising interpersonal assertiveness, and constructively managing social conflict. Grounded in interpersonal competency models, this subscale measures:

• Assertive Communication and Boundary Defense: Self-perceived capability to articulate divergent viewpoints, challenge perceived injustice, and establish behavioral boundaries against peer mistreatment or teasing without resorting to maladaptive aggression (e.g., Item 10: “I can express my opinions when other classmates disagree with me”; Item 11: “I can stand up for myself when I feel I am being treated unfairly”; Item 12: “I can get others to stop annoying me or hurting my feelings”).
• Prosocial Relational Initiation and Maintenance: The agentic ability to initiate, cultivate, and sustain reciprocal friendships with both same-sex and opposite-sex peers, as well as conducting fluid interpersonal conversations (Items 13, 14, and 15).
• Collaborative Group Efficacy and Social Help-Seeking: Cooperative efficacy in collaborative group work and knowing how to solicit peer support to resolve social disagreements (Items 16 and 17).

3. Drug-Related Self-Efficacy (Items 18–20)

This critical subscale evaluates substance refusal self-efficacy—specifically, the child’s belief in their ability to refuse peer solicitations and resist normative social pressure toward substance experimentation. Refusal efficacy represents a cognitive buffer against early risk behaviors. The subscale focuses on three primary gateway substances:

• Tobacco Refusal Efficacy: Confidence in resisting peer enticements or coercive pressure to smoke cigarettes (Item 18: “I can resist peer pressure to smoke cigarettes”).
• Alcohol Refusal Efficacy: Confidence in declining alcohol, including beer, wine, and distilled spirits, when pressured by peers (Item 19: “I can resist peer pressure to drink beer, wine, or liquor”).
• Cannabis Refusal Efficacy: Perceived capacity to refuse invitations or peer expectations to smoke marijuana (Item 20: “I can resist peer pressure to smoke marijuana”).

Theoretical Framework

The Child Perceived Self-Efficacy Scale is rooted in Albert Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory (1986, 1997). At the heart of this theoretical paradigm is triadic reciprocal determinism, which posits that human functioning is the product of continuous, dynamic interactions between cognitive/personal factors, environmental influences, and overt behavioral patterns.

Bandura conceptualized perceived self-efficacy as the primary cognitive mechanism governing human agency. Self-efficacy beliefs dictate how individuals feel, think, motivate themselves, and behave. In this framework, self-efficacy is distinct from self-concept or self-esteem: while self-esteem refers to an individual’s evaluation of their overall self-worth (an affective judgment), self-efficacy represents an individual’s cognitive evaluation of their capability to execute specific tasks (a performance judgment).

Sources of Efficacy Information

According to social cognitive theory, children construct self-efficacy judgments through four foundational informational channels:

1. Mastery Experiences: Authentic performance accomplishments serve as the most potent vehicle of efficacy development. Repeated success in finishing homework or turning down peer solicitations instills robust self-efficacy beliefs, whereas early failures weaken it.
2. Vicarious Experiences: Observing peers perform tasks successfully provides social comparison benchmarks that foster parallel efficacy beliefs (“If they can resist peer pressure or solve complex math problems, I can too”).
3. Social Persuasion: Encouragement, corrective guidance, and positive reinforcement from significant others (parents, teachers, coaches) fortify a child’s belief in their capabilities.
4. Physiological and Affective States: Somatic cues—such as racing heart rates, anxiety, or calm focus—are interpreted by the child as indicators of prospective capability or vulnerability. High perceived self-efficacy dampens debilitating autonomic arousal during evaluative stress.

Developmental Systems Perspective

Fertman and Primack (2009) synthesized Bandura’s work with developmental systems theory. In middle childhood, children undergo significant cognitive shifts from concrete operational thought to emergent formal operational reasoning. Concurrently, their social context expands rapidly from the nuclear family into formal academic classrooms and peer networks. By linking cognitive-behavioral self-regulation (learning efficacy), interpersonal mastery (peer efficacy), and social resistance (drug refusal efficacy), the CPSES captures the triadic domain balance required for positive youth development and the avoidance of adolescent problem behaviors (Jessor & Jessor’s Problem Behavior Theory).

Validity

The psychometric validity of the CPSES has been established across multiple validation studies encompassing elementary and middle school cohorts. The primary validation study by Fertman and Primack (2009), conducted with 420 elementary students enrolled in grades 3 through 6 across urban and suburban educational institutions, supplied comprehensive empirical evidence regarding construct, convergent, discriminant, and criterion-related validity.

Construct and Structural Validity

Construct validity was established through sequential exploratory and confirmatory factor modeling. The underlying 3-factor structure accounted for a substantial portion of the total variance across items, with all 20 items loading unambiguously onto their hypothesized theoretical dimensions (factor loadings > .40, with primary loadings predominantly between .55 and .88). Goodness-of-fit parameters confirmed that the 3-factor conceptualization was statistically superior to unidimensional or 2-factor orthogonal configurations.

Convergent Validity

Convergent validity was demonstrated by examining the relationship between CPSES subscale scores and validated external markers of child functioning:

• Learning-Associated Self-Efficacy: Exhibited statistically significant, robust positive correlations with standardized academic achievement indices, teacher-rated academic engagement ($r = .48, p < .001$), and documented rates of homework completion.
• Peer-Associated Self-Efficacy: Demonstrated strong positive correlations with standardized measures of child sociometric status, peer acceptance ratings, and prosocial behavioral scales ($r = .42, p < .001$).
• Drug-Related Self-Efficacy: Correlated strongly with validated measures of anti-drug attitudes, perceived parental disapproval of drug use, and accurate normative perceptions regarding adolescent substance prevalence ($r = .53, p < .001$).

Discriminant Validity

Discriminant validity was established by comparing the CPSES against generalized construct measures. The correlation between the CPSES subscales and measures of generalized trait anxiety, social desirability bias, and global physical self-esteem was low to nonsignificant ($r < .20$), indicating that the instrument captures discrete behavioral efficacy rather than generalized positive affect, social approval seeking, or global self-worth.

Predictive and Criterion Validity

In prospective tracking analyses, lower scores on the Drug-Related Self-Efficacy subscale significantly differentiated children classified as “at-risk” for future substance initiation from their peers. Logistic regression modeling confirmed that each 1-point decrement on the Drug-Related subscale was associated with a greater than threefold increase in the odds of substance experimentation initiation over a 12-month follow-up period, controlling for demographic covariates and family history.

Reliability

The Child Perceived Self-Efficacy Scale possesses strong internal consistency and temporal stability across diverse pediatric and early adolescent cohorts. In the definitive normative sample of elementary students ($N = 420$) documented by Fertman and Primack (2009), classical test theory reliability indices yielded strong internal consistency parameters:

• Learning-Associated Self-Efficacy (Items 1–9): Cronbach’s $\alpha = .83$, reflecting high internal homogeneity across items measuring homework completion, attentional control, and cognitive organization.
• Peer-Associated Self-Efficacy (Items 10–17): Cronbach’s $\alpha = .75$, demonstrating acceptable to good internal reliability for multidimensional social competence and interpersonal assertion items in this developmental age group.
• Drug-Related Self-Efficacy (Items 18–20): Cronbach’s $\alpha = .91$, indicating excellent internal consistency across the three substance resistance items.
• Total Scale Composite Reliability: When computed as an overarching index of general childhood self-efficacy, overall internal consistency routinely surpasses $\alpha = .87$.

Subsequent psychometric evaluations examining stability coefficients across a 4- to 6-week test-retest test interval revealed intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) between .74 and .82 across all subscales, confirming that the scale captures stable self-appraisals rather than momentary situational moods, while maintaining sufficient sensitivity to detect targeted developmental and psychoeducational interventions.

Factor Analysis

The structural dimensionality of the CPSES was originally established via Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) utilizing Principal Axis Factoring (PAF) with Promax oblique rotation, which accommodates theoretical intercorrelations among related self-efficacy dimensions.

Exploratory Factor Analysis Findings

The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) measure of sampling adequacy (.88) and Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity ($\chi^2(190) = 3142.6, p < .001$) confirmed data factorability. The scree test and Kaiser eigenvalue criterion ($lambda > 1.0$) converged on a 3-factor solution:

• Factor 1: Learning-Associated Self-Efficacy: Eigenvalue = 5.24, accounting for approximately 26.2% of total item variance. Factor loadings for Items 1 through 9 ranged from .51 to .78, with zero cross-loadings exceeding .25.
• Factor 2: Peer-Associated Self-Efficacy: Eigenvalue = 2.48, accounting for approximately 12.4% of total item variance. Factor loadings for Items 10 through 17 ranged from .44 to .74.
• Factor 3: Drug-Related Self-Efficacy: Eigenvalue = 1.96, accounting for approximately 9.8% of total item variance. Items 18, 19, and 20 loaded heavily onto this factor, with loadings of .85, .89, and .87, respectively.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) Fit Indices

Subsequent Confirmatory Factor Analyses evaluating the 3-factor correlated latent model against alternative models (single-factor and orthogonal two-factor models) demonstrated superior structural fit indices:

• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): .948 (exceeding the standard $ge .90$ benchmark for acceptable model fit).
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): .939.
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): .046 (90% Confidence Interval: .038 – .054), indicating close model-to-data fit.
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): .042.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

The technical parameters and administration profile of the Child Perceived Self-Efficacy Scale are detailed below:

• Test Type: Standardized self-report psychometric rating scale; domain-specific perceived self-efficacy inventory.
• Target Population: Children in late elementary and early middle school (typically grades 3 through 6, ages 8 to 12 years). It can be administered to older adolescents experiencing developmental delays or in remedial contexts.
• Administration Format: Individual or group paper-and-pencil questionnaire, or proctored computer/tablet digital assessment. For younger cohorts (grade 3), standardized oral read-aloud administration by a proctor is clinically recommended to mitigate reading comprehension discrepancies.
• Administration Time: Approximately 8 to 12 minutes for full 20-item completion.
• Total Item Count: 20 items.
• Subscales:
  • Learning-Associated Self-Efficacy: 9 items (Items 1 to 9).
  • Peer-Associated Self-Efficacy: 8 items (Items 10 to 17).
  • Drug-Related Self-Efficacy: 3 items (Items 18 to 20).
• Response Scale: 5-point unipolar Likert-type scale reflecting self-confidence:
  • 1 = Not at all Confident
  • 2 = A little Confident
  • 3 = Moderately Confident
  • 4 = Pretty Confident
  • 5 = Very Confident
• Scoring and Computational Rules:
  • All 20 items are formulated in a positive, direct trajectory; there are no reverse-coded items.
  • Subscale Scores: Derived by summing the respective item numerical ratings or calculating the continuous arithmetic mean for each domain:
    • Learning-Associated Score range: 9 to 45 (or mean score 1.00 to 5.00).
    • Peer-Associated Score range: 8 to 40 (or mean score 1.00 to 5.00).
    • Drug-Related Score range: 3 to 15 (or mean score 1.00 to 5.00).
  • Interpretation & Risk Stratification: Higher aggregate and mean scores indicate stronger perceived efficacy. For the Drug-Related subscale, mean scores falling below 4.00 or any individual rating $le 3$ (“Moderately Confident” or lower) classify the child as “at risk for drug use,” warranting targeted substance prevention intervention.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Child Perceived Self-Efficacy Scale was published in 2009 by Carl I. Fertman and Brian A. Primack in the Journal of Drug Education, with subsequent publication in clinical assessment handbooks (e.g., Simmons & Lehmann, 2013). The instrument was developed under academic research initiatives supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and academic institutions, and its items are published in the public domain for research, educational, and clinical evaluative use.

Licensing and Fee Status: There are no commercial licensing fees or purchase costs required for academic researchers, non-profit institutions, or school personnel administering the CPSES for non-commercial educational, diagnostic, or scientific assessment purposes. Clinicians and researchers must cite the original primary validation papers by Fertman and Primack (2009) in all professional publications, institutional presentations, and reports. Commercial adaptation, integration into proprietary clinical software, or for-profit resale requires direct permission from the copyright holders and publishers.

References

• Bandura, A. (1986). Social foundations of thought and action: A social cognitive theory. Prentice-Hall.
• Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. W. H. Freeman and Company.
• Bandura, A. (2006). Guide for constructing self-efficacy scales. In F. Pajares & T. Urdan (Eds.), Self-efficacy beliefs of adolescents (Vol. 5, pp. 307–337). Information Age Publishing.
• Fertman, C. I., & Primack, B. A. (2009). Elementary student self-efficacy scale development and validation focused on student learning, peer relations, and resisting drug use. Journal of Drug Education, 39(1), 23–38. https://doi.org/10.2190/DE.39.1.b
• Fertman, C. I., & Primack, B. A. (2013). Child Perceived Self-Efficacy Scale. In C. A. Simmons & P. Lehmann (Eds.), Tools for strengths-based assessment and evaluation (pp. 440, 468–469). Springer Publishing Company.
• National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI). (2009). Elementary student self-efficacy scale development and validation focused on student learning, peer relations, and resisting drug use (PMC3008354). PubMed Central. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3008354/

13. Items of the Scale (Questionnaire)