As an anti-oppressive social work researcher, I would come at such questions from a completely different perspective, so I'm not sure my response is going to be useful at all. But here I go anyway... I would find it difficult to look at the notion of self-efficacy without looking at privilege -- for example, white, heterosexual, well-educated, middle class, able-bodied men actually have a huge advantage in being able to accomplish what they set out to do, since all our social systems are designed for their success. Take that same man, but imagine he was born with a mobility disability and his parents are working class -- he will not be likely to score as high on self-efficacy. His life experiences will include many more barriers and he will have learned that his ability to accomplish things or not is often a function of physical access. Yet he still will be able to accomplish more, and perhaps have a consequent higher sense of self efficacy, than a First Nations person from a remote Northern reserve. 

Having said that, I do think self-efficacy is an important concept. But from my perspective, it needs to be situated in people's social locations, because our society systematically erodes the possibilities for entire groups of people to succeed. For example, I'm a social work educator in a small Northern university. Every single First Nations students I have taught has been told by a teacher that they are dumb or that they will never succeed. These are soul destroying comments when made by people in authority to children and the children carry them their entire lives. So I would love to know how to increase the sense of self-efficacy of such students about their education. How do we help students with oppressed identities, who are the first in their family to go to university, to succeed? Clearly, their own belief that they can succeed is of high importance. I see some such students who have fierce determination, despite everything that has happened to deter them. I would be extremely interested in knowing what makes it possible for them to have that belief.

In terms of whether self-efficacy has the same meaning in other cultures -- maybe that would be an interesting exploratory study, if it hasn't already been done. I'm obviously speaking here as a qualitative researcher. Self-efficacy is a psychology construct -- I'm not even sure that if you would ask white men working at a construction site what self-efficacy means to them that they would be able to give an answer. Should we think about translating such terms into "plain language" for research participants? (I'm speaking from my own experience from a recent study on "educational equity" where the students we interviewed didn't understand the meaning of the term.)

I'm concerned that if we keep using validated research instruments that we are more and more learning are culturally biased, we run the risk of research findings that further marginalize oppressed groups. (E.g., we might find that Black people have low self-efficacy, depending on what social class, etc we interview.)

What I do know, from my own social work practice, is that most people from oppressed groups have their own often very creative ways of surviving that are quite different from someone as privileged as me. I'm not sure how all that translates into the concept of self-efficacy. As I mentioned at the start, I'm not sure if my comments are going to be helpful, coming from such a different field... I'm interested in other comments on the topic. Thanks for asking the question.

Silvia, you have identified the exact reasons I want to look at this.  Thank you for a long and thoughtful response to my question.

I agree with Prof. Straka.

I would use SES and race as a moderator and look at self-esteem within each group. Although there are individual differences within groups, persons who live in adverse conditions not only have those as additional stressors, but they also experience mistreatment and this influences psychosocial and physiological outcomes that influence long term health and cognition. I wrote an editorial on mistreatment in the Journal of Psychosomatic Research and there is a large body of research on this topic.

What I find interesting is what factors allow persons who are born into terrible conditions, to move out of those conditions. These are not only genetic, which influence intelligence and overall health, but also personality and spinoffs such as resilience. Self-esteem is only one aspect of resilience. I would add self-efficacy, optimism, and sense of coherence. There is variability in these factors even among persons who are greatly disadvantaged. I wish you well with your work.

Hi Aron, 

My article "The impact of migration experiences and

migration identities on the experiences of

services and caring for a family member with

dementia for Sikhs living in Wolverhampton, UK" talks about resiliency and self-efficacy in migrants which you may find useful. You should be able to download it from here. If not send me a request and I'll upload it directly to you. All the best, Karan. 

http://www.academia.edu/8211121/Race_and_Gender_Differences_in_Self-efficacy_Assessing_the_Role_of_Gender_Role_Attitudes_and_Family_Background

Thank you. This is very helpful (and timely!)