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Occupationally relevant skills were selected from the 66 GOE Categories of the Selected Characteristics of Occupations Defined in the Dictionary of Occupational Titles (U.S. Department of Labor, 1981). These skills were then translated into items and reduced to 230 self-efficacy statements. Subjects were asked to respond to each item in terms of their confidence in their ability to perform the task. Test-retest reliability for the 230 items was .77 over a 2- to 3- week period. The responses of 1,265 subjects were factor analyzed using a principle components method and promax rotation. The result was four, clean, non-overlapping factors. By eliminating some items, the instrument was reduced to a 60-item scale with four, 15 item subscales reflecting the four factors. Factor 1 describes language and interpersonal skills; factor 2 emphasizes quantitative, logical, scientific, and business skills; factor 3 describes physical strength and agility; factor 4 reflects aesthetic skills. Cronbach-Alphas describing internal consistency for the four resulting scales are all above .90, as is test-retest reliability over a 2-week period. In addition, intercorrelation matrices for the four factors are reported here.
Osipow et al. (Fri,) studied this question.