Journal of Educational Psychology © 2012 American Psychological Association

2013, Vol. 105, No. 1, 25–38 0022-0663/13/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0029692

Examining Dimensions of Self-Efficacy for Writing

Roger Bruning, Michael Dempsey, Courtney McKim

and Douglas F. Kauffman University of Wyoming
University of Nebraska, Lincoln

Sharon Zumbrunn
Virginia Commonwealth University

A multifactor perspective on writing self-efficacy was examined in 2 studies. Three factors were
proposed—self-efficacy for writing ideation, writing conventions, and writing self-regulation—and a
scale constructed to reflect these factors. In Study 1, middle school students (N ⫽ 697) completed the
Self-Efficacy for Writing Scale (SEWS), along with associated measures. Confirmatory factor analysis
(CFA) showed SEWS data fit the proposed 3-factor model well. In Study 2, a second CFA of data from
563 students from 2 high schools likewise showed good model fit. Scores based on the 3 writing
self-efficacy factors were examined in relation to students’ liking writing, self-reported writing grades,
and statewide writing assessment (SWA) scores. Results showed writing ideation and self-regulation
self-efficacy to be significantly more strongly related to liking writing than conventions self-efficacy but
less related than conventions self-efficacy to SWA scores. All 3 writing self-efficacy dimensions showed
moderate positive correlations with self-reported writing performance. Further analyses showed higher
levels for all 3 dimensions of writing self-efficacy for students in more advanced English/language arts
classes. Overall, results from the studies were interpreted as supporting multifactor models of writing
self-efficacy and the utility of closer ties between self-efficacy measures and domains being assessed.

Keywords: writing, self-efficacy, ideation, conventions, self-regulation

Few perceptions about the self are more important than self-
efficacy beliefs— confidence that one can perform successfully in
a particular domain (Bandura, 1997, 2006). Willingness to engage
in domain-related activities and persist when confronted with
difficulties or distractions are only two of self-efficacy’s important
correlates. Higher self-efficacy levels relate to multiple positive
outcomes, including setting higher goals, using more effective
learning strategies, and having lower anxiety (Bong, 2006). Self-
efficacy becomes especially critical when domain-related tasks are
demanding and motivational conditions are less than ideal. Writing
is one such domain.
This article describes a new perspective on writing self-efficacy.
It builds on a large body of prior research showing self-efficacy’s
importance for successful writing performance and its ties to a
This article was published Online First August 13, 2012.
Roger Bruning, Michael Dempsey, and Douglas F. Kauffman, Depart-
ment of Educational Psychology, University of Nebraska, Lincoln; Court-
ney McKim, Department of Professional Studies, University of Wyoming;
Sharon Zumbrunn, Foundations of Education Department, Virginia Com-
monwealth University.
We want to thank members of the Nebraska Writing Research Group for
their suggestions and feedback and express our deep appreciation to the
administration and teachers of the Lincoln (NE) Public Schools, especially
Leslie Lukin, Karen Saunders, and David Smith, for their generous support
throughout the planning and conduct of this research.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Roger Brun-
ing, Center for Instructional Innovation, 209 Teachers College Hall, University
of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE 68588-0384. E-mail: rbruning@unl.edu
variety of other writing-related variables (McCarthy, Meier, &
Rinderer, 1985; Pajares, 2003, 2007; Pajares & Johnson, 1996;
Pajares, Miller, & Johnson, 1999; Pajares & Valiante, 1997, 2006;
Shell, Colvin, & Bruning, 1995; Shell, Murphy, & Bruning, 1989;
Zimmerman & Bandura, 1994). This prior research also has helped
attune researchers and practitioners to writing’s motivational and
self-regulatory dimensions (e.g., Bruning & Horn, 2000; Graham,
2006; Hayes, 1996; Zimmerman & Kitsantas, 1999, 2002, 2007).
At the same time, however, it seems to have shed relatively little
light on the processes involved in the act of writing. With only a
few exceptions, writing self-efficacy measures have tended to
atheoretically sample writing activities, tasks, and outcomes. We
propose that aligning measures more explicitly with psychological
and linguistic features of the writing process may provide oppor-
tunities to learn more about both self-efficacy for writing and
writing itself.
The starting point for this study, therefore, was an assumption
that a multifactor portrayal of writing self-efficacy, as contrasted
with a more global sampling view, might better reflect self-
efficacy for writing. Based on models and research emphasizing
idea translation and the role of language-related processes in
writing (e.g., Beers & Nagy, 2009; Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1987;
Flower & Hayes, 1981, 1984; Hayes, 2012; Myhill, 2008;
Schleppegrell, 2007) and research showing strong effects of strat-
egy instruction on writing quality (e.g., Graham & Perin, 2007;
Harris, Graham, & Mason, 2006), we posited three classes of
activities as consistently involved in the writing act: (1) generating
ideas (ideation), (2) expressing those ideas using writing’s
language-related tools (conventions), and (3) managing writing

25
26 BRUNING, DEMPSEY, KAUFFMAN, MCKIM, AND ZUMBRUNN
decisions and behaviors (self-regulation). This model guided con-
struction of a writing self-efficacy measure. We then examined the
model’s theoretical and practical implications in two studies, one
with middle school students and a second with high school stu-
dents.
Prior Measures of Writing Self-Efficacy
In this section we present examples of previous research on
writing self-efficacy that informed our current effort. Our primary
goal here is not to comprehensively review writing self-efficacy
research, which has been done elsewhere (e.g., Klassen, 2002;
Pajares, 2003), but to illustrate how writing self-efficacy has been
conceptualized and assessed. We focus specifically on the mea-
sures utilized in these studies and on views of writing that each
seems to reflect, beginning with research by McCarthy and her
associates (1985).
Research by McCarthy and Associates
In one of the earliest empirical studies to explicitly reference
writing self-efficacy, McCarthy et al. (1985) studied the relation-
ship between college students’ writing self-efficacy and perfor-
mance. McCarthy et al.’s index of writing quality was raters’
judgments of 19 skills students used in writing expository essays;
their measure of writing self-efficacy was students’ ratings of their
certainty about whether they could demonstrate these same skills.
As described by the authors, their measure’s items focused most
directly on writing mechanics, such as writing an essay without
major spelling errors or run-on sentences, and accounted for ap-
proximately 10%–15% of the variance in students’ actual writing
scores.
Research by Shell and Associates
Following up on McCarthy et al.’s (1985) work, Shell et al.
(1989) surveyed college students to examine relationships among
writing self-efficacy, outcome expectancy beliefs, and writing
achievement. They gathered writing samples from each student
written in response to the prompt “What do you believe to be the
qualities of a successful teacher?” These writing samples were
judged analytically by independent raters blind to the students’
survey responses.
Shell et al. (1989) measured writing efficacy with two subscales:
a task subscale and a component skills subscale. The first consisted
of items sampling self-efficacy for writing activities students
might conceivably perform (e.g., writing an essay or short story),
while the second required efficacy judgments about writing-related
skills (e.g., correctly spelling words, using parts of speech prop-
erly). Shell et al. found that although writing task self-efficacy did
not predict writing performance, writing skills self-efficacy did,
foreshadowing findings in both their own and others’ studies (e.g.,
Pajares et al., 1999; Pajares & Valiante, 2001) that writing self-
efficacy measures focusing on basic writing skills reliably predicts
writing quality.
In a subsequent study, Shell et al. (1995) studied grade- and
achievement-level differences in fourth, seventh, and 10th graders’
writing self-efficacy. Short essays again were gathered from stu-
dents, this time descriptions of their favorite television programs.
Shell et al.’s self-efficacy scales were similar to those they had
used earlier but were adapted to fit this study’s younger partici-
pants. Writing skills self-efficacy was shown to predict writing
performance at all grade levels but, unlike writing task self-
efficacy, did not increase significantly with grade level, suggesting
that writing self-efficacy gains are more related to students’ abil-
ities to successfully perform various writing tasks than to changes
in specific writing skills.
Research by Pajares and Associates
In work beginning in the 1990s, Pajares and his associates (e.g.,
Pajares, 2003, 2007; Pajares, Britner, & Valiante, 2000; Pajares et
al., 1999; Pajares & Valiante, 1997, 1999, 2001, 2006) developed
what arguably has been the most comprehensive writing self-
efficacy research program to date. In an early study, Pajares and
Johnson (1994) found that writing skills but not writing task
self-efficacy predicted students’ actual performance in composing
essays, mirroring Shell et al.’s (1989) earlier findings. Subsequent
research by Pajares and Valiante revealed several additional find-
ings related to writing self-efficacy, including gender-related dif-
ferences, an inverse relationship to writing apprehension, and its
independent and mediating effects on writing achievement (Pa-
jares, 2007; Pajares & Valiante, 1997, 1999, 2001).
Pajares and Valiante’s primary measure of writing self-efficacy
has been the Writing Self-Efficacy Scale (WSES; Pajares, 2007;
Pajares & Valiante, 1999). As described by Pajares (2007), this
scale was constructed based on discussions of items previously
used by Shell et al. (1995, 1989) and rewriting them to make them
appropriate across all grade levels. As reported in Pajares (2007),
the WSES requires that students “provide judgments of their
confidence in their ability to successfully perform grammar, usage,
composition, and mechanical writing skills, such as correctly
punctuating a one page passage or organizing sentences into a
paragraph to clearly express a theme” (p. 240).
In most of Pajares and his associates’ work, writing self-efficacy
has been treated as a unidimensional construct. Pajares (2007)
suggested, however, that the WSES might reflect potentially sep-
arable dimensions of writing self-efficacy and conducted explor-
atory factor analyses of WSES performance of students in Grades
4 through 11 (Pajares, 2007) showing this to be the case. Two
factors emerged—the first reflecting basic skills (e.g., spelling,
using punctuation and verb tenses correctly) and a second tapping
more complex composition skills (e.g., structuring paragraphs and
essays, using topic sentences).
Like Shell and colleagues’ tasks and skills measures previously,
Pajares’s basic and complex factors suggest the possibility of
parsing the construct of writing self-efficacy to good effect. At the
same time, it clearly is difficult to tie either of these researchers’
measures directly to models of writing (e.g., Bereiter & Scarda-
malia, 1987; Flower & Hayes, 1984; Hayes, 1996, 2006) or to
potentially writing-relevant psychological and language-related
processes (e.g., Flower & Hayes, 1984; Myhill, 2008:
Schleppegrell, 2007). As an illustration of how this connection has
been made for self-regulation and writing, we now turn to work by
Zimmerman and his associates. In the body of writing self-efficacy
research, Zimmerman’s framing of self-efficacy for self-regulation
as writers plan, write, and reflect on their writing (see Zimmerman
 DIMENSIONS OF WRITING SELF-EFFICACY
& Kitsantas, 2007) seems to rest most clearly on a theory-based
account of writing processes.
Research by Zimmerman and Associates
In an influential early study, Zimmerman and Bandura (1994)
predicted that college students’ self-efficacy for regulating writing
activities along with self-efficacy for academic achievement and
grade-related goals would predict writing attainment beyond ver-
bal aptitude. Students in regular and advanced English composi-
tion classes completed the authors’ Writing Self-Regulatory Effi-
cacy Scale, consisting of 25 items on which students rated their
perceived capability for successfully executing strategic aspects of
writing such as planning and revising, responding to creative
requirements of writing, and self-managing writing time and ac-
tivities. Principal components analysis showed the Writing Self-
Regulatory Efficacy Scale represented a single factor. Among
Zimmerman and Bandura’s findings were that students in the
advanced class had higher self-efficacy for managing writing ac-
tivities. Self-efficacy scores also predicted the self-evaluative stan-
dards students used and confidence in receiving higher grades. To
Zimmerman and Bandura, these results not only indicated self-
regulatory efficacy’s importance for writing but suggested their
measure’s potential use in making diagnostic assessments.
In subsequent research, however, Zimmerman and his associates
emphasized measures of self-efficacy closely tied to their experi-
mental work, in which modeling and directing attention to writing
process goals were utilized to improve writing skills and writing
self-efficacy (e.g., Zimmerman & Kitsantas, 1999, 2002; see also
Schunk & Zimmerman, 2007). Zimmerman and Kitsantas (1999,
2002), for instance, designed experimental interventions in which
students learned to combine simple kernel sentences into a nonre-
petitive sentence and then were asked to make self-efficacy judg-
ments about whether they could successfully rewrite new kernel
sentences. Thus, while these writing self-efficacy measures are
highly suited to their experimental purposes, they were not in-
tended to function as general assessments.
Summary of Previous Writing Self-Efficacy Research
Writing self-efficacy research extending back into the mid-
1980s has illuminated relationships between writing self-efficacy
and multiple writing-related variables (e.g., writing quality and
standards, level of writing apprehension), revealed groups in
which writing self-efficacy may be lower or higher (e.g., students
in different grades, boys or girls), and pointed to the possibility of
self-efficacy varying by type of writing performance. Most writing
self-efficacy measures, however, have broadly sampled writing-
related skills and tasks, making them less than ideal for yielding
information about writers’ self-efficacy for specific dimensions of
writing. An exception has been Zimmerman’s work on self-
efficacy for writing self-regulation, which identified multiple ac-
tivities tied to self-regulatory competence in writing (Zimmerman
& Bandura, 1994; Zimmerman & Kitsantas, 2007). Thus far,
however, no models or measures have been developed that provide
independent information on writers’ self-efficacy for meeting writ-
ing’s cognitive and linguistic, as well as its self-regulatory de-
mands.
27
Toward an Alternative Perspective on Writing
Self-Efficacy
Self-efficacy is a domain-specific construct, which means that
there can be no all-purpose measure of self-efficacy. As Bandura
(2006) has stated, scales of perceived self-efficacy “must be tai-
lored to the particular domain of functioning that is the object of
interest” (p. 308). Pajares and Valiante (2006) similarly argued
that measures of self-efficacy must reflect “an understanding of
both the domain under investigation and its different features, as
well as of the types of capabilities the domain requires and the
range of situations in which these capabilities might be applied” (p.
162).
In our judgment, these views strongly suggest the value of
framing writing self-efficacy in ways that will yield information on
writers’ judgments about successfully meeting writing’s psycho-
logical, linguistic, and behavioral challenges. Operationalizing
such a framework presumably should be directed at dimensions of
writing judged to be both theoretically and practically important.
We sought to build on Zimmerman and colleagues’ research by
tying our measure to a model of writing that separately highlights
writing’s cognitive and language-related aspects as well as its
self-regulatory dimensions.
Four Assumptions About the Act of Writing and
Writing Self-Efficacy
Four assumptions guided development of our writing self-
efficacy framework. The first, following the models and concep-
tions of Flower and Hayes and others (e.g., Chenoweth & Hayes,
2001; Flower & Hayes, 1980, 1981, 1984; Hayes, 1996, 2012;
McCutchen, Teske, & Bankston, 2008; Zimmerman & Kitsantas,
2007) is that writing is a complex cognitive act generating high
demands on working memory. As Flower and Hayes (1980) wrote
in an oft-quoted description, a writer in the act of writing is “a
thinker on a full-time cognitive overload” (p. 33). Compared with
conversation, for instance, which provides a great deal of contex-
tual scaffolding for speech production and understanding, most
writing contexts provide much less support (Bruning & Horn,
2000). Writing’s grammatical forms are highly formalized. Writers
also typically are displaced from their audience, requiring they
expend cognitive resources figuring out how to communicate with
an unseen reader.
A second assumption is that writing development advances
slowly. Writing requires coordination and integration of numerous
subskills, and the typically slow course of writing development
reflects writers’ need to proceduralize knowledge at multiple cog-
nitive, metacognitive, and linguistic levels (e.g., Bereiter & Scar-
damalia, 1987; Kellogg, 2008; McCutchen et al., 2008). For novice
writers, for example, the activity of writing—whether retrieving
words from long-term memory or expressing ideas within appro-
priate syntactic frames—requires conscious attention to virtually
all levels of the composition process (e.g., choosing words, spell-
ing them correctly, putting them in sentences). For such writers,
especially, working memory will be freed for essential tasks such
as idea generation and organization only when fluency is achieved
on other levels (Chenoweth & Hayes, 2001).
Our third assumption, perhaps somewhat more conjectural than
the first two, stems from our own writing experiences and obser-
28 BRUNING, DEMPSEY, KAUFFMAN, MCKIM, AND ZUMBRUNN
vations. Because writing typically is an extended, effortful act, we
propose that writers form strong impressions of their own writing
experiences. These can range from judgments of their levels of
success on various tasks (e.g., the ability to choose appropriate
words or satisfy a language’s conventions) to feelings of anxiety or
frustration. Certainly, writing-related outcomes (e.g., writing
grades) affect writing self-efficacy, as has been shown in numer-
ous studies (e.g., see Pajares, 2003), but we assume also that many
self-evaluative judgments about degree of success in meeting
writing’s many challenges—and hence self-efficacy for writing—
emerge during the writing process itself.
Our fourth assumption also is conjectural—writers group their
writing-related experiences into psychologically meaningful cate-
gories— but is grounded in the tendency to organize knowledge
into schema-like conceptual structures (Schraw, 2006). Aggre-
gated over time, we argue, writers’ judgments about their writing
become identifiable, stable dimensions of their sense of themselves
as writers. While we do not dispute the validity of a generalized
writing self-efficacy, potentially interesting subcategories may be
implied by questions such as these: Can I think of things to write
about? Can I express my ideas in writing? Can I keep myself on
track as I write— by avoiding distractions and coping with my
feelings as I’m writing? If they are, their measurement may hold
further clues for building writing motivation and success.
Overall, then, our portrayal of writing begins with the assump-
tion, widely shared, that writing is a demanding process that only
slowly becomes automatized and fluent. We also assume that the
writing process creates strong memorial impressions that writers
group into psychologically identifiable categories. With these as-
sumptions in mind, we now turn to our proposed dimensions of
writing self-efficacy and the rationales for each. If they do in fact
reflect writers’ psychological realities and are represented ade-
quately in a writing self-efficacy measure, we would first expect
our empirical data to reflect the posited dimensions. If so, we then
could explore the extent to which these dimensions relate to other
variables, such as liking writing and writing performance.
A Model of Writing Self-Efficacy
We see the writing self-efficacy model described in this section
as consonant with writing process models emphasizing working
memory’s centrality (e.g., Flower & Hayes, 1984; Hayes, 2006,
2012), as well as with other portrayals of writing and writing
development (e.g., Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1987; Bruning &
Horn, 2000; Graham, 2006; Zimmerman & Kitsantas, 2007). The
model has three focal dimensions tied to earlier researchers’ work
(e.g., Pajares, 2007; Shell et al., 1995; Zimmerman & Bandura,
1994; Zimmerman & Kitsantas, 2007). The first is ideation, which
we view as rooted in cognitive processes, primarily idea genera-
tion, and generally tied to the domains of semantics and schematic
knowledge (Schraw, 2006). The second is writing conventions,
which in our operationalization refers to the specific articulation of
ideas into writing’s forms and is aligned with Flower and Hayes’
concept of translation (Flower & Hayes, 1980; Hayes, 2006,
2012). The third dimension is self-regulation, which we see as
extending well beyond writing’s activities (see Zimmerman &
Kitsantas, 2007) to its management, monitoring, and evaluation.
Consistent with most writing researchers, we view writing as
highly recursive and therefore do not posit a sequential ordering
for these domains.
Writing Self-Efficacy: Ideation
We argue that one likely dimension of writing self-efficacy is
writers’ beliefs about their abilities to generate ideas, their ide-
ation. Writing cannot proceed without ideas. Idea generation has a
prominent place both in Flower and Hayes’s (1984) model of the
writing process and in Hayes’s (1996, 2006, 2012) later revisions
of the original Flower and Hayes model. In all of these models,
idea generation is portrayed as an ongoing process in working
memory influencing all other parts of writing. Various dimensions
of ideation can be conceptualized as creating distinguishable
writing-related challenges. For instance, do I have ideas to write
about, are they good ideas, and can I find the right words to
express them?
Idea generation is situated primarily within the domain of se-
mantics (Cruse, 2004; Evans & Green, 2006; Langacker, 1987,
2008) and involves writers’ abilities to generate the content and
ordering of their thoughts. Although often thought of as tied
mostly to words (Cruse, 1986, 2004; Langacker, 2008; Read,
2000), semantic knowledge also exists in schema-like structures
and is reflected in fluid use of connotative and denotative mean-
ings. As will be seen subsequently, our writing ideation self-
efficacy items focus on writers’ judgments of the availability,
quality, and ordering of their ideas.
Writing Self-Efficacy: Conventions
A second dimension of our model is self-efficacy for writing
conventions, which refer to a set of generally accepted standards
for expressing ideas in writing in a given language. In English
these would include agreed-upon ways to spell, punctuate, capi-
talize, and structure sentences. We have drawn this label from the
writing literature; related terms include writing mechanics and
translation (Fayol, Alamargot, & Berninger, 2012; Flower &
Hayes, 1981). Conventions provide the frames within which writ-
ers express their ideas successfully.
Although terms like conventions and mechanics seem to con-
note low-level writing processes, writing draws on a complex array
of linguistically based knowledge for beginning and advanced
writers alike (e.g., Myhill, 2008; Schleppegrell, 2007). Whereas
speakers can rely on contextual support, writers mostly cannot,
requiring them to recognize and use “rules” of written expression.
Self-efficacy for executing writing conventions can vary widely,
just as using them can be highly automatized (e.g., as in a profes-
sional journalist’s writing) or require a conscious, effortful set of
responses (e.g., a child’s attempt to “write a neat paper”; Graham,
2006).
Using writing’s conventions begins early and develops along
multiple dimensions. In English, for example, beginning writers
must understand the alphabetic principle, that letters represent a
language’s sounds, and have phonemic awareness, the ability to
recognize separable sounds in spoken words (Ehri, 2005; Vellu-
tino, Tunmer, Jaccard, & Chen, 2007). These understandings,
along with knowledge of words’ spellings, orthography, are
needed to give writing meaning. Morphological awareness—
knowing how a language ties sound and meaning and how mor-
 DIMENSIONS OF WRITING SELF-EFFICACY
phemes can be combined (Kuo & Anderson, 2006; Nagy,
Berninger, & Abbott, 2006)—also is needed for communication of
such concepts as tense, number, and possession. Putting words to
screen or paper reflects other important dimensions of conven-
tions. Spelling words correctly, for example, depends on knowl-
edge in many linguistic categories. Other conventions lie literally
beyond words—in the domains of syntax and discourse. Each
written language has its own devices—ranging from word order to
punctuation—for signaling writers’ intended meanings. Can writ-
ers generate complete sentences and use a language’s markers
(e.g., capitalization) to clearly express what is meant? Can they
sequence and combine ideas, the target of the early instructional
approach called sentence combining (e.g., O’Hare, 1973), recently
revisited by Saddler and Graham (Saddler, Behforooz, & Asaro,
2008; Saddler & Graham, 2005)? Beyond the sentence level lie
discourse structures such as those of narrative and exposition.
Mature writing requires understanding not only of such structures’
features and purposes but of ways to signal their presence (e.g., by
paragraphing, headers).
As with ideation, we assume writers’ cumulative experiences
with writing conventions to be reflected in self-efficacy judgments.
In grappling with writing conventions, writers presumably gradu-
ally form a sense of their capabilities with this set of challenges
and their likely future success in performing them. For instance,
spelling self-efficacy both varies widely across individuals (e.g.,
Rankin, Bruning, & Timme, 1994) and correlates significantly
with various writing-related measures, including writing self-
efficacy, predictions of writing success, and writing performance
itself (Klassen & Georgiou, 2008).
Writing Self-Efficacy: Self-Regulation
Self-efficacy for writing self-regulation is reflected in writers’
confidence they can direct themselves successfully through writ-
ing’s many dimensions and subtasks (Zimmerman & Bandura,
1994; Zimmerman & Kitsantas, 2007). Having ideas to write about
and command of writing’s conventions are essential to writing but
not all of it. Writing can be difficult and tedious. Self-regulatory
skills are needed not only to generate productive ideas and writing
strategies but also to manage the anxieties and emotions that can
accompany writing.
As operationalized by Zimmerman and Bandura (1994), writing
self-regulation includes activities providing a “start to finish”
portrayal of writing a paper. Among them are the ability to find
suitable writing topics, start writing without difficulty, capture
readers’ interest early on, adjust writing style for varied audiences,
clarify sentences by rewriting them, get “unstuck” from writing
problems, motivate oneself to write even when a topic is less than
captivating, and find and correct grammatical errors.
Writers obviously need a variety of self-regulatory strategies to
cope with such complexity. They need to coordinate syntactic and
semantic knowledge, control aspects of the writing process as
diverse as getting started and avoiding distractions (e.g., Hidi &
Boscolo, 2006), and evaluate whether they are achieving their
goals. Like self-efficacy for ideation and conventions, self-efficacy
for self-regulation of writing likely varies greatly across writers
(Zimmerman & Bandura, 1994), with questions such as these
pointing to some of writing’s key self-regulatory challenges: Can
I get started writing? Can I keep my writing going, especially when
29
it gets difficult? and Can I manage my frustrations when my
progress slows or stalls?
Summary of the Model and Introduction to the
Present Studies
We have proposed three dimensions for a model of writing
self-efficacy: self-efficacy for writing ideation, conventions, and
self-regulation. Writing’s ideational processes include generating
and shaping the concepts, principles, and reasoning upon which
writing depends. Success in using conventions, in contrast, seems
to draw more heavily on linguistic skills as writers choose from
among a language’s words, syntactic forms, and discourse struc-
tures in expressing their ideas. The final category—self-efficacy
for writing self-regulation— can reasonably be identified with a
writer’s self-management and affective control but also involves
judgments about cognitive and linguistic features as writing is
being produced.
In the studies reported here, we describe tests of this model with
two groups in which we expected writing-related efficacy judg-
ments to be well formed. First, in a study of middle school
students, we hypothesized that our writing self-efficacy data would
be characterized by a three-factor structure consistent with our
proposed framework. We used confirmatory factor analysis (CFA)
to test this hypothesis. If the data reflected the hypothesized
framework, we then could test its generality with a sample of high
school students and examine potential relationships to variables
previously explored in writing self-efficacy research. These in-
cluded students’ actual and self-reported writing performance,
their liking of writing, and indicators of their general literacy-
related competence.
Study 1
Method
The goal of Study 1 was to test the adequacy of a three-factor
model of writing self-efficacy. For this study, middle school stu-
dents completed the Writing Habits and Beliefs Survey (WHBS),
which included the Self-Efficacy for Writing Scale (SEWS) self-
efficacy items. The WHBS, designed to yield information on
students’ writing habits and motivations, also tapped students’
writing achievement goals (Kauffman et al., 2010; Zumbrunn,
Bruning, Kauffman, & Hayes, 2010); implicit beliefs about writing
(Bruning, Kauffman, Haines, & Zumbrunn, 2012; White & Brun-
ing, 2005); and writing-related activities, habits, and attitudes
(Zeleny & Yilmaz-Soylu, 2010: Zumbrunn, Kauffman, Hayes, &
Yilmaz-Soylu, 2010). WHBS data relating to writing achievement
goals, implicit beliefs, and habits extend beyond the present arti-
cle’s scope and are not reported here.
Our hypothesis was that data yielded by the self-efficacy mea-
sure would closely fit the three-factor model previously described.
As a first step in testing model fit, we proposed a single-factor
model as a contrasting case, based on an assumption that the data
would not reflect a multifactor structure. We then compared the fit
of this single-factor model with the fit of our hypothesized three-
factor model.
Participants. Six hundred ninety-seven students from four
middle schools in a midsize midwestern city completed the WHBS
30 BRUNING, DEMPSEY, KAUFFMAN, MCKIM, AND ZUMBRUNN

during the spring semester. The sample included all students
enrolled in eighth grade English/language arts (ELA) classes. In
the overall pool of Study 1 participants, of those reporting their
grade level (n ⫽ 694), 692 (99.7%) were eighth graders, one was
a seventh grader, and one a ninth grader. Of those reporting gender
(n ⫽ 692), 327 (47.3%) were boys and 365 (52.7%) girls. Mean
reported age (n ⫽ 678) was 13.8 years; modal age was 14 (70.4%).
Overall, approximately 62% of the participating students reported
their racial– ethnic status as Caucasian, 10% as African American,
8% as Latino/Latina, 5% as Asian/Pacific Islander, and 15% as
multiracial or another ethnicity. Five hundred eighty-two (83.5%)
reported that English was the primary language spoken at home;
110 students (16.5%) reported languages other than English pri-
marily being spoken there. The proportions of students participat-
ing in free or reduced lunch programs in the four participating
schools were 76%, 66%, 51%, and 23% (overall proportion in
district middle schools ⫽ 38.1%).
Measures
Self-Efficacy for Writing Scale (SEWS). SEWS consists of
16 items corresponding to the three posited categories of writing-
related experience: ideation, conventions, and self-regulation.
Some of these items, primarily from the ideation and conventions
categories, had been previously utilized in a study of college
students (Dempsey, Bruning, & Kauffman, 2010), in which our
goal was to obtain a general estimate of writing self-efficacy. We
also examined items from Pajares (2007), Zimmerman and Ban-
dura (1994), and those of Shell et al. (1995, 1989) as we began to
formulate and operationalize the framework for the current study.
As the framework was further refined through discussions within
our research team and in consultations with school personnel, a
new, expanded set of items reflecting the hypothesized three-factor
structure was created and pilot-tested with a second set of college
students. A near-final set of items was again reviewed by school
personnel, who suggested changes in wording and methods of
survey administration to make the measure more suitable for
students in middle and high school.
The final version of the 16 SEWS items can be seen in Table 1.
Five items were designed to represent idea generation, five con-
ventions, and six writing self-regulation. Following methods sug-
gested by Bandura (2006) and utilized by other self-efficacy re-
searchers (Pajares, Hartley, & Valiante, 2001; Shell et al., 1989),
participants rated their self-efficacy on each item on a 0 to 100
scale ranging from no confidence to complete confidence. Analy-
ses of SEWS’ item performance and factor structure were the
primary goals of this study.
Permission for conducting the study was obtained from the
university institutional review board, the school’s district office,
and principals of the participating schools. A letter from the senior
researchers informing parents/guardians about the study and its
purposes was distributed to ELA teachers and sent home with their
students. It stated that students would be completing a writing-
related survey (the WBHS) in their ELA classes that would take
15–20 min to complete, that results were confidential, and that
participation in the study was voluntary and would have no effect
on their student’s grades or relationships with teachers or the
school. No students declined participation.
Surveys were administered during class time in the students’
assigned classrooms by their teachers. The teachers read general
instructions for completing the survey, which indicated that there
were no correct or incorrect answers and that students should raise
their hands if they had any questions. While there was no time
limit for completing the survey, the instructions to teachers indi-
cated that “when most of the students had finished,” they could
suggest that all students try to finish “in the next minute or two.”
Feedback received from teachers indicated that students completed
the survey comfortably within the 20-min time frame. When
finished, students returned their surveys to their teachers, who
forwarded them on to the district office.

Table 1
Final Model Parameters for a Three-Factor Model of Writing Self-Efficacy: Middle School Students

Factor and item Factor loading Standard error Standardized value

Ideation
1. I can think of many ideas for my writing. 1.000 0.000 0.799
2. I can put my ideas into writing. 0.978 0.041 0.823
3. I can think of many words to describe my ideas. 1.018 0.041 0.838
4. I can think of a lot of original ideas. 0.991 0.043 0.800
5. I know exactly where to place my ideas in my writing. 0.928 0.042 0.770

Conventions
6. I can spell my words correctly. 1.000 0.000 0.636
7. I can write complete sentences. 0.920 0.058 0.728
8. I can punctuate my sentences correctly. 1.281 0.073 0.835
9. I can write grammatically correct sentences. 1.381 0.077 0.869
10. I can begin my paragraphs in the right spots. 0.843 0.062 0.595

Self-regulation
11. I can focus on my writing for at least one hour. 1.000 0.000 0.803
12. I can avoid distractions while I write. 0.984 0.042 0.806
13. I can start writing assignments quickly. 0.964 0.041 0.816
14. I can control my frustration when I write. 0.742 0.043 0.634
15. I can think of my writing goals before I write. 0.826 0.042 0.701
16. I can keep writing even when it’s difficult. 0.803 0.039 0.734
 DIMENSIONS OF WRITING SELF-EFFICACY
Results
We first sought to determine goodness of fit of the SEWS data
to a single-factor model and to our proposed three-factor model.
The criteria and standards used to judge model fit (see Hu &
Bentler, 1999) included the comparative fit index (CFI; values
above 0.95 indicate very good fit, and those at or above 0.90
indicate reasonable fit; Bentler, 1990), Steiger’s root-mean-square
error of approximation (RMSEA; values below 0.05 indicate a
very good fit, and those at or below 0.10 indicate a reasonable fit;
Steiger, 1990), and the standardized root-mean-square residual
(SRMR; ⬍0.05; Hu & Bentler, 1999). This constellation of fit
statistics conforms to recommended strategies for evaluating fit of
structural models (Hu & Bentler, 1999).
We first fit the data from SEWS to the single-factor model. The
fit was unacceptable, ␹2(104) ⫽ 1,750.205, p ⬍ .001, CFI ⫽
0.750, RMSEA ⫽ 0.151, SRMR ⫽ 0.094, indicating that this
model did not adequately explain the data’s structure. We then fit
the data to the hypothesized three-factor model. The fit this time
was acceptable, ␹2(101) ⫽ 439.152, p ⬍ .001, CFI ⫽ 0.949,
RMSEA ⫽ 0.069, SRMR ⫽ 0.046, and was significantly better
than the one-factor model, ⌬␹2(3) ⫽ 1,311.053, p ⬍ .001. The
fitted data, which encompassed all 16 items, was consistent with
the proposed model, so no further models were tested. Factor
loadings are presented in Table 1.
Mean ratings of self-efficacy were 70.46 (SD ⫽ 20.49), 79.31
(SD ⫽ 16.44), and 61.31 (SD ⫽ 23.26) for the ideation, conven-
tions, and self-regulation subscales, respectively. Distributions for
each showed significant (p ⬍ .001) levels of negative skewness
(– 0.804, –1.450, and – 0.513, respectively; all SEs ⫽ 0.093),
indicating that student ratings of writing self-efficacy tended to-
ward higher levels of the rating scale and were not normally
distributed. The three scales showed significant positive correla-
tions with one another. The correlation between ideation and
self-regulation was strong (r ⫽ .718), while conventions was
moderately correlated with both ideation (r ⫽ .526) and self-
regulation (r ⫽ .463). Reliabilities for each of the factor-related
subscales also were high. Alpha for the five items related to the
ideation factor was 0.903, for the five conventions items 0.847,
and for the six self-regulation items 0.884.
Discussion
The purpose of Study 1 was to test the extent to which responses
to SEWS’ items fit the proposed model of self-efficacy of writing.
Results revealed evidence for SEWS’ capture of three dimensions
of self-efficacy for writing— generating writing ideas; expressing
them within writing’s linguistic forms; and managing the behav-
ioral, mental, and emotional challenges of writing. Although dif-
ferences in levels of self-efficacy cannot be judged directly from
mean ratings of different item types, there plainly were some
sizeable differences by category, with these middle school students
on average rating their confidence highest for carrying out writing
conventions and lowest on their ability to manage writing’s self-
regulatory dimension.
Based on Study 1 results consistent with the proposed three-
factor model, we then turned to a new sample— high school
students—to test the model’s generality. If high school students’
performance also was consistent with the model, we then would
31
examine relationships of its dimensions to other variables in this
new sample.
Study 2
Method
Overview. Data for Study 2 were gathered from high school
students in the same school system as students in Study 1. Like
Study 1 participants, Study 2 participants—mostly 11th graders—
completed the comprehensive survey of writing habits, the WHBS.
The majority of these students would take the state’s statewide
writing assessment (SWA) approximately one month later. Our
goals in Study 2 were to (1) use CFA to test the generalizability of
the three-factor self-efficacy for writing model and (2) contingent
on the CFA findings replicating those at the middle school level,
examine SEWS factors’ relationships to other variables, which
included liking writing, SWA performance, self-reported writing
grades, and English/language arts (ELA) class enrollment. As in
Study 1, the WHBS tapped additional student data (e.g., achieve-
ment goal orientation, implicit beliefs about writing) not reported
here.
Participants. Five hundred sixty-three 11th and 12th graders
in two public high schools in a midwestern city completed the
survey during the spring semester. The four middle schools from
which Study 1 participants were drawn served as feeder schools
for these two schools. Of participants reporting their grade level
(n ⫽ 557), 520 (93.4%) were 11th graders and 37 (6.6%) were
12th graders; of those reporting gender (n ⫽ 553), 292 (52.8%)
were boys and 261 (47.2%) girls. Mean reported age (n ⫽ 537)
was 16.76 (SD ⫽ 0.77), with a modal age of 17. Overall, approx-
imately 70% of the participating students were Caucasian, 7%
African American, 6% Latino/Latina, 6% Asian/Pacific Islander,
and 10% multiracial or of another ethnicity. Four hundred eighty
(87%) of the participants reported that English was the primary
language spoken at home, while 75 students reported languages
other than English primarily being spoken there. Proportions of
students participating in free or reduced lunch programs in the
participating schools were 45% and 22% (overall proportion in
district high schools ⫽ 31.0%). SWA scores in the school’s
database that could be matched to our survey data set were avail-
able for 470 students. These students’ demographics mirrored
those in the overall survey sample.
English class enrollment. All participants were enrolled in
one of four ELA courses in their high schools: General English
(GE), Composition (Comp), American Literature and Composition
(ALC), and Advanced Placement Language and Composition
(APLC). General English is the most basic of the classes. As
described in information provided by school personnel, GE is
designed for juniors and seniors needing further work in develop-
ing language and composition skills needed to meet the school’s
graduation demonstration requirement. The class focuses on build-
ing writing skills through narrative and expository writing; stu-
dents study a variety of American fiction and nonfiction, as well as
magazines and newspaper articles. They also receive instruction in
study skills and strategies. Thirty-seven (6.6%) of our participants
were enrolled in GE, 12 of whom reported a language other than
English being spoken at home.
32 BRUNING, DEMPSEY, KAUFFMAN, MCKIM, AND ZUMBRUNN
Composition, in which 31 participants (5.5%) were enrolled (11
reporting a language other than English spoken at home), is the
next-level class. This class is intended to help students acquire
skills in narrative, expository, and persuasive writing through
guided practice, which focuses on writing processes and products
and includes study of the students’ own and others’ writings. Study
of the English language and effective research techniques also are
included. This course can be taken as an alternative to meet the
writing graduation demonstration requirement.
The majority of our participants (n ⫽ 323, 57%) were enrolled
in American Literature and Composition classes. Of these, 40
reported that a language other than English was spoken at home.
Students in these classes study literature of the Americas reflecting
a multicultural society and its history. They read and discuss short
stories, novels, folklore, drama, poetry, essays, and biographies.
Emphasis in written composition is placed on expository form and
style and on critical responses to literature and film.
Finally, just over 30% (n ⫽ 172) of our participants were
enrolled in Advanced Placement Language and Composition,
the most advanced of the classes. Twelve of these students
reported that English was not the primary language spoken at
home. This course is designed to help students become skilled
readers of prose written in a variety of rhetorical styles and
skilled writers who compose for a variety of purposes. Writing
and reading activities are designed to help students become
aware of interactions among a writer’s purposes, audience, and
subjects, as well as how language conventions and resources
make writing effective.
Measures
Self-Efficacy for Writing Scale (SEWS). The SEWS measure
administered to the high school students in Study 2 was identical
to that given to the middle school students in Study 1, consisting
of 16 items representing self-efficacy for performing in three
writing-related dimensions: ideation, conventions, and self-
regulation. As in Study 1, the high school students rated their
writing self-efficacy on a 0 to 100 scale (Bandura, 2006).
Liking Writing Scale (LWS). Four Likert-type items were
constructed to provide general information about the extent of
students’ positive attitudes about writing. These items were (1) “I
enjoy writing,” (2) “I don’t like to write” (reverse-coded), (3)
“writing is fun,” and (4) “I feel bad when I write” (reverse-coded).
Students rated items on a 5-point scale, ranging from strongly
disagree to strongly agree. CFA results revealed a good fit be-
tween the LWS data and a one-factor solution, ␹2(2) ⫽ 4.72, p ⫽
.0942, CFI ⫽ 0.998, RMSEA ⫽ 0.049, SRMR ⫽ 0.012, and item
analysis showed good reliability for the LWS (␣ ⫽ .831).
Self-reported writing performance. Students reported their
writing-related grades in two school-related contexts for the cur-
rent year: (1) on writing assignments in their ELA classes and (2)
on writing assignments in other classes. For each, they were asked
to indicate if their current-year writing assignment grades were “all
or mostly all” A⫹ or A, B⫹ or B, C⫹ or C, D⫹ or D, or F. Each
self-reported grade category was coded on a 5-point scale (A⫹ or
A ⫽ 5, B⫹ or B ⫽ 4, etc.) and the two scores combined to create
a single writing performance index (␣ ⫽ .774).
Statewide writing assessment (SWA). Approximately one
month after completing the WHBS, which included the above
measures, most of these same students took part in the state’s
statewide writing assessment (SWA), writing to a prompt ask-
ing them to create a persuasive essay. SWA procedures in-
volved a first day, in which students received the prompt and
planned their response, and a second, in which they completed
their writing (Dappen, Isernhagen, & Anderson, 2008). In the
administration in which our participants were involved, each of
the approximately 22,000 essays generated statewide at each
grade level was then hand-scored in a central location in the
state in a 3-day session by practicing teachers familiar with
student writing at the grade level being assessed. Each student’s
writing sample was judged by two trained raters, who first
reviewed each paper based on the analytic criteria of the 6-Trait
Writing Model (Spandel, 2005)—ideas and content, organiza-
tion, word choice, sentence fluency, conventions, and voice—
and then assigned global ratings on a 1– 4 scale. Thus, all
participants in the SWA, including ours, received a rating that
was the sum of the two individual ratings and ranged from 2– 8.
Reliabilities for the SWA scoring procedure generally have
been acceptable. For the 2007 SWA, for instance, 49% of rater
pairs produced exact categorical matches, and 48% of raters
placed papers in adjacent categories; only 3% of papers re-
quired adjudication (Nebraska Department of Education, 2007).
SWA scores for the students in our high school sample were
made available for our research through a blinded process in
which the school system’s evaluation personnel matched stu-
dents’ SWA scores provided by the state to our survey data and
then forwarded an anonymous data set back to us.
Procedures. Permission for conducting Study 2 was obtained
from our university’s institutional review board, the school’s dis-
trict office, and the participating schools’ principals. A letter
informing parents/guardians of the study and its purposes was
distributed to the schools’ ELA teachers and sent home with the
students. It stated that students would complete a 15- to 20-min
writing-related survey in class, that results were confidential, and
that participation in the study was voluntary and would have no
effect on student grades or relationships with teachers or the
school. No students declined participation.
In addition to completing the SEWS and LWS as part of the
WHBS, students also reported which of the four high school ELA
courses they were enrolled in; their writing-related grades in ELA
and other classes; and their age, gender, and ethnicity. Surveys
were administered during class time in the students’ assigned ELA
classrooms by their teachers. As in Study 1, teachers gave students
general instructions for responding to the survey and told them
there was no time limit. When students finished, they returned the
completed surveys to their teachers, who forwarded them to the
school district office.
Results
Tests of model fit. We tested the new data’s fit to the three-
factor model observed in Study 1, again employing the generally
accepted criteria used to judge model fit (see Hu & Bentler, 1999);
these included the comparative fit index (CFI), Steiger’s (1990)
root-mean-square error of approximation (RMSEA), and the stan-
dardized root-mean-square residual (SRMR; Hu & Bentler, 1999).
The fit of SEWS’ 16 items to the three-factor model in the high
school data was acceptable, ␹2(101) ⫽ 361.489, p ⬍ .001, CFI ⫽
 DIMENSIONS OF WRITING SELF-EFFICACY
0.953, RMSEA ⫽ 0.069, SRMR ⫽ 0.045.1 Because this model
reflected both theoretical predictions and current data, no further
models were tested.
Loadings of SEWS items on the three factors are presented in
Table 2. Mean ratings of writing self-efficacy were 73.56 (SD ⫽
18.99), 84.39 (SD ⫽ 14.43), and 62.63 (SD ⫽ 23.02) for the
ideation, conventions, and self-regulation subscales, respectively.
As in Study 1, subscale distributions were negatively skewed
(skewness ⫽ –1.018, –1.677, and – 0.589, respectively; SEs ⫽
0.104, 0.103, and 0.104, respectively; ps ⬍ .001). The three factors
showed medium to high correlations with one another. The corre-
lation between writing ideation self-efficacy and self-regulatory
self-efficacy again was the strongest (r ⫽ .707, p ⬍ .001), while
self-efficacy for writing conventions was moderately correlated
with self-efficacy for ideation (r ⫽ .530, p ⬍ .001) and self-
regulation (r ⫽ .440, p ⬍ .001). Alphas for the writing ideation,
conventions, and self-regulation self-efficacy subscales were
high— 0.923, 0.858, and 0.874, respectively—paralleling Study 1
findings.
Relationship of SEWS to other variables. Table 3 shows
correlations among SEWS subscales, the LWS, self-reported writ-
ing grades, and student SWA performance. Each of the three
SEWS subscales showed significant positive correlations to the
LWS (p ⬍ .001). While the correlations between ideation (r ⫽
.487) and self-regulation (r ⫽ .497) subscale scores with the LWS
did not differ from one another (Meng, Rosenthal, & Rubin, 1992),
both were significantly greater (p ⬍ .001) than the relationship
between the SEWS conventions scale and the LWS (r ⫽ .225).
Each of the three SEWS subscales also showed significant (p ⬍
.001) moderate positive correlations with self-reported writing
performance (rs ranging from .357 to .404). The relationships of
SEWS subscales to SWA performance were considerably more
variable, however, with positive but relatively low relationships
between SEWS ideation and SWA scores (r ⫽ .203) and between
self-regulation and SWA scores (r ⫽ .206), compared with a
significantly higher (p ⬍ .001) relationship between SEWS con-
ventions and SWA scores (r ⫽ .378). Self-reported writing per-
formance in school was moderately related (r ⫽ .332, p ⬍ .001) to
scores on the SWA.
Table 4 presents mean scores for the SEWS measure, the LWS,
for self-reported writing performance, and SWA performance as a
function of ELA class enrollment. Potential differences by class
enrollment on each of the SEWS dimensions, the LWS, and the
performance measures were tested by means of one-way analyses
of variance (ANOVAs). Because of the multiple tests of signifi-
cance, evidence of heterogeneity of variance in some tests, and
uneven ns among the groups, alpha levels for all tests and follow-
ups were set at p ⫽ .01. ANOVAs showed that mean scores on all
variables differed significantly by group (see Table 4), with ratings
on all categories of beliefs (SEWS ideation, conventions, and
self-regulation variables; LWS scores) and performance scores
(self-reported writing grades, SWA scores) trending higher at each
higher level of ELA enrollment. Follow-up tests using Tukey’s
honestly significant difference analysis showed that APLC stu-
dents scored significantly higher in SEWS self-efficacy for writing
ideation than all other groups, while GE students scored signifi-
cantly lower than all other groups. On the SEWS self-efficacy for
writing conventions scale, students in ALC and APLC classes
scored higher than did those in Comp classes, who in turn scored
33
higher than did GE students. On SEWS self-efficacy for writing
self-regulation subscale, APLC students scored higher than did GE
and Comp students. On the LWS, APLC students indicated sig-
nificantly more positive feelings about writing than did GE stu-
dents. APLC and ALC students reported receiving significantly
better grades on their classroom-related writing than did students
in GE and Comp groups. Finally, students in the APLC and ALC
classes scored significantly higher on the SWA than did the Comp
students, who in turn scored significantly better than did the GE
students.
Discussion
The purposes of Study 2 were to (1) use CFA to test the
generalizability of the three-factor self-efficacy for writing model
in a new sample of students and, assuming good model fit, to (2)
examine SEWS factors’ relationships with other writing-related
constructs. Consistent with Study 1’s findings with middle school
students, Study 2 results for high school students supported a
multifactor conceptualization of writing self-efficacy, with high
school students’ responses to the three SEWS subscales—self-
efficacy for writing ideation, writing conventions, and writing
self-regulation— closely matching the proposed three-factor
model. Positive relationships among SEWS subscale scores also
were noted. Self-efficacy for writing ideation and self-regulation
shared nearly 50% of their variance (r ⫽ .707), while self-efficacy
for conventions again had significantly less in common with either
of these dimensions (rs ⫽ .530 and .440, respectively). Our mea-
sure of writing affect, the LWS, was considerably more strongly
related to self-efficacy for meeting the ideational and self-
regulatory challenges of writing (rs ⫽ .487 and .497, respectively)
than to self-efficacy for conventions (r ⫽ .225). These findings
suggest a commonality between confidence for managing writ-
ing’s cognitive and metacognitive dimensions that has stronger ties
to feelings about writing than confidence in one’s ability to carry
out writing’s conventions.
Significant differences were present in the high school group in
patterns of relationships of SEWS subscale scores with self-
reported writing grades and SWA scores. As can been seen in
Table 3, correlations are moderate, positive, and roughly equiva-
lent between the SEWS ideation, conventions, and self-regulation
dimensions and self-reported writing performance (rs ⫽ .357,
.404, and .394, respectively). For SWA performance, however, this
approximate level of relationship to the writing self-efficacy sub-
scales was present only for writing conventions (r ⫽ .378). Al-
though significant, the relationships between self-efficacy for writ-
ing ideation and SWA scores (r ⫽ .203) and self-efficacy for
writing self-regulation and SWA scores (r ⫽ .206) were signifi-
cantly lower, with each sharing less than 5% of variance with
SWA performance. Liking writing had only a small relationship
(r ⫽ .133) to SWA performance, with less than 2% of variance
shared.
Overall, the relationships noted in this study between the writing
beliefs measures (i.e., self-efficacy, liking writing) and SWA per-
1
The model fit statistics were essentially the same when tested with and
without students reporting a language other than English as the primary
language spoken at home. The model reported here is based on all students
in the pool.
34 BRUNING, DEMPSEY, KAUFFMAN, MCKIM, AND ZUMBRUNN

Table 2
Final Model Parameters for a Three-Factor Model of Writing Self-Efficacy: High School Students

Factor and item Factor loading Standard error Standardized value

Ideation
1. I can think of many ideas for my writing. 1.000 0.000 0.841
2. I can put my ideas into writing. 1.036 0.041 0.863
3. I can think of many words to describe my ideas. 1.052 0.042 0.848
4. I can think of a lot of original ideas. 0.986 0.042 0.820
5. I know exactly where to place my ideas in my writing. 1.016 0.043 0.826

Conventions
6. I can spell my words correctly. 1.000 0.000 0.645
7. I can write complete sentences. 0.829 0.059 0.703
8. I can punctuate my sentences correctly. 1.253 0.077 0.857
9. I can write grammatically correct sentences. 1.297 0.079 0.869
10. I can begin my paragraphs in the right spots. 0.919 0.070 0.643

Self-regulation
11. I can focus on my writing for at least one hour. 1.000 0.000 0.769
12. I can avoid distractions while I write. 0.983 0.053 0.768
13. I can start writing assignments quickly. 1.056 0.052 0.820
14. I can control my frustration when I write. 0.832 0.051 0.679
15. I can think of my writing goals before I write. 0.929 0.050 0.766
16. I can keep writing even when it’s difficult. 0.901 0.047 0.784

formance are relatively modest. At least two factors may have
contributed to this. First, approximately a month passed between
the administration of the writing beliefs measures and when stu-
dents took the SWA, which creates the potential for other factors
to moderate the relationship between confidence about perfor-
mance and actual performance. Ideally, such measures should be
administered contextually and in close temporal contiguity to the
performance. Second, the SEWS measure, while designed to yield
scores for subdomains of writing performance, is not focused on
specific writing tasks and genres. That is, SEWS provides infor-
mation about confidence for performing identifiable dimensions of
the writing process, but in its present form it does not query
self-efficacy for performance on writing assessments or any other
specific writing task or genre. Future research involving more
targeted measures of writing self-efficacy designed to explore such
relationships should prove valuable.
Writing self-efficacy beliefs of students across the four ELA
classes differed significantly on all three SEWS factors, showing
that student beliefs about performing capably in writing-related
tasks are tied to class placement along multiple dimensions. APLC
students on average reported significantly higher self-efficacy for
writing ideation than did all other groups, for instance, while GE
students reported lower self-efficacy for their ability to generate
ideas for writing than did students in all other classes. Other
differences were that APLC and ALC students had higher self-
efficacy for writing conventions than did students in Comp and GE
classes, while APLC students judged their ability to self-regulate
their writing activities significantly more positively than did both
the GE and Comp students.
If, as Bandura (1986) has argued, enactive mastery in any
domain is the most reliable route to building self-efficacy, differ-
ential experiences and success as writers seem likely to have

Table 3
Relationships Among SEWS Self-Efficacy Variables, Liking Writing, and Self-Reported and Test-Based Writing Performance for High
School Students

Statewide
Self-reported writing
SEWS: SEWS: Liking Writing writing assessment
Measure Conventions Self-regulation Scale (LWS) performance (SWA)a

SEWS: Ideation 0.530 (N ⫽ 555) 0.707 (N ⫽ 554) 0.487 (N ⫽ 553) 0.357 (N ⫽ 550) 0.203 (N ⫽ 457)
SEWS: Conventions 0.440 (N ⫽ 554) 0.225 (N ⫽ 557) 0.404 (N ⫽ 553) 0.378 (N ⫽ 460)
SEWS: Self-regulation 0.497 (N ⫽ 553) 0.394 (N ⫽ 551) 0.206 (N ⫽ 457)
Liking Writing Scale (LWS) 0.256 (N ⫽ 553) 0.133 (N ⫽ 462)
Self-reported writing performance 0.332 (N ⫽ 455)
Note. All correlations, with the exception of the relationship between the LWS and SWA (p ⫽ .003), are significant at p ⬍ .001. SEWS ⫽ Self-Efficacy
for Writing Scale.
a
Our sample included all students enrolled in 11th grade English/language arts classes at participating schools. Ns are lower for SWA comparisons because
not all of these students took the SWA. Demographic data showed that approximately 30% of these “missing” students were 12th graders enrolled in these
classes who could not have taken the SWA, which is given only to 11th graders. Correlations run with and without 12th graders produced nearly identical
results for all relationships.
 DIMENSIONS OF WRITING SELF-EFFICACY 35

Table 4
Mean SEWS Writing Ideation, Conventions, and Self-Regulation Self-Efficacy; LWS Scores; Self-Reported Writing Performance; and
SWA Performance by High School Students’ ELA Class Enrollment

English/language arts class enrollment

GE (n ⫽ 37) Comp (n ⫽ 31) ALC (n ⫽ 323) APLC (n ⫽ 172) Effect
Measure M (SD) M (SD) M (SD) M (SD) F p MSE size

SEWS: Ideation 62.05 (24.69) 69.40 (19.13) 72.39 (19.84) 78.84 (13.93) 10.22 .001 343.57 .053
SEWS: Conventions 64.66 (20.06) 72.17 (16.12) 84.65 (13.70) 90.19 (7.78) 49.15 .001 165.85 .211
SEWS: Self- regulation 53.71 (24.51) 53.73 (20.76) 60.60 (23.31) 69.66 (20.82) 9.95 .001 506.70 .052
Liking Writing Scale (LWS) 3.10 (0.90) 3.41 (0.78) 3.33 (0.95) 3.71 (0.85) 8.53 .001 0.822 .044
Self-reported writing performance 7.17 (2.06) 6.74 (1.48) 8.15 (1.40) 8.93 (1.08) 34.70 .001 1.875 .160
Statewide writing assessment (SWA) 3.95 (1.64) 4.86 (1.68) 5.98 (1.17) 6.73 (0.74) 61.59 .001 1.191 .287
Note. SEWS ratings ranged from 0 (no confidence) to 100 (completely confident), LWS scores from 1 to 5, self-reported writing performance scores from
2 to 10, and SWA scores from 2 to 8. Ns for the SWA analysis were 28, 14, 254, and 166 for the four groups, respectively. The effect size index is partial
␩2. SEWS ⫽ Self-Efficacy for Writing Scale; LWS ⫽ Liking Writing Scale; SWA ⫽ statewide writing assessment; ELA ⫽ English/language arts: GE ⫽
General English; Comp ⫽ Composition; ALC ⫽ American Literature and Composition; APLC ⫽ Advanced Placement Language and Composition; MSE ⫽
mean square error.

played a role in the formation of these students’ self-efficacy
beliefs. For instance, students in the APLC and ALC classes had
significantly higher SWA scores than did the GE and Comp
students and reported receiving significantly better writing-related
grades. As can be seen in Table 4, these performance differences
were substantial, especially between the least and most advanced
groups. There also were considerable differences in attitudes to-
ward writing between the groups at the high and low ends of the
class placement continuum (APLC and GE groups), although
ratings of feelings about writing were moderately positive overall
in Study 2’s high school sample, averaging 3.43 on a 5-point scale.
One possible source of self-efficacy differences was a significant,
␹2(3, N ⫽ 552) ⫽ 31.19, p ⬍ .001, disproportionality among the
proportions of students reporting that a language other than Eng-
lish was the primary language spoken in their home. These pro-
portions were 32% and 35% in the GE and Comp courses, respec-
tively, compared with only 12% in the ALC and 7% in the APLC
classes. However, post hoc analyses showed no significant differ-
ences in SWA scores in any of the classes between students
reporting English and those reporting a language other than Eng-
lish as the primary language spoken at home. Future research
explicitly focusing on such factors as language background and
course-related experiences will be needed to provide a better
account of such factors’ influence on writing self-efficacy.
General Discussion
The two studies reported here establish an empirical foundation
for multifactorial models of writing self-efficacy and for other
writing self-efficacy measures based on such views. The logic
underlying this study’s three-part model, which divided the writing
act into ideational, expressive, and self-regulatory dimensions, is
that writers sort their views of their capabilities for carrying out
writing-related tasks into recognizable categories. Such categories,
we argue, can be both theoretically and practically meaningful. In
Flower and Hayes’ models of writing (e.g., Flower & Hayes, 1981,
1984; Hayes, 1996, 2012), for example, writers are portrayed as
calling on their topical and world knowledge to generate and
organize writing-related ideas. We recognize a second category of
self-efficacy beliefs as having more direct ties to the craft of
writing—successfully translating ideas into linguistic forms. Al-
though some might underestimate the importance of “writing
mechanics,” they in fact are a key to successful writing—the
ability to express what one wants to say by putting the “world on
paper” (Olson, 1994). Self-efficacy for self-regulation also seems
to occupy at least some part of every writer’s judgments of him- or
herself as a writer. Individuals can form at least some conclusions
about their capabilities for articulating writing goals, embarking on
writing tasks, and keeping at writing, especially when it becomes
difficult.
Analyses of these two sets of data show that middle and high
school students responded to the categories represented by SEWS’
items in similar ways and provide initial evidence for the utility of
measuring separable dimensions of writing self-efficacy. Students
enrolled in different levels of high school English/language arts
classes, for instance, showed significant differences in levels of
writing-related self-efficacy on each of the SEWS subscales,
which themselves showed varying relationships to different writ-
ing outcome measures. Self-efficacy for writing conventions and
scores on a formal measure of writing, the SWA, also shared
significantly more variance than did self-efficacy for ideation and
self-regulation and the SWA. In contrast, the significantly greater
relationships between liking writing and self-efficacy for writing
ideation and writing self-regulation than between liking writing
and self-efficacy for writing conventions hint at the possibility of
greater affect associated with writers’ confidence for thinking of
good ideas (ideation) and managing the writing process (self-
regulation) than with believing they can capably execute writings’
conventions.
The SEWS measure may have potential utility for research in
both theoretical and applied domains. Because it ties more explic-
itly than does general self-efficacy measures to dimensions of
writing performance yet samples them reasonably broadly, the data
it yields could be useful in studies of instructional interventions
and outcomes. Future studies using SEWS or another multifaceted
measure of writing self-efficacy, for example, could extend earlier
studies of writing self-efficacy development by providing finer
grained data on developmental patterns (e.g., Pajares & Valiante,
1999; Shell et al., 1995) and gender-related differences (Pajares et
36 BRUNING, DEMPSEY, KAUFFMAN, MCKIM, AND ZUMBRUNN
al., 1999; Pajares & Valiante, 1997, 2001) in writing self-efficacy.
Because of their relative brevity and straightforwardness, such
measures may also lend themselves to evaluations of writing-based
interventions or use in connection with standardized measures of
writing performance.
Although we are optimistic about this approach thus far, we
recognize several limitations in the work reported here. First, we
do not view the three-part model operationalized in the current
studies as adequately representing writing’s complexities but as
only one of many potentially useful frameworks for measuring
writing self-efficacy that could be proposed. In constructing the
current model, we deliberately limited our perspective to self-
efficacy for accomplishing activities happening during the writing
act. We excluded planning, for instance, because we judged that it
does not occur with every writer and writing occasion. There
doubtless are also other important dimensions of writing (e.g.,
revision) about which writers may hold self-efficacy beliefs that
are both sensitive to differences in writers’ backgrounds or devel-
opmental levels and tied to writing success.
Second, this study does not address issues of genre or other
contextual factors tied to writing self-efficacy. It seems highly
probable that, for most writers, self-efficacy differs substantially
by type of writing and writing contexts. For instance, there obvi-
ously are many genres (e.g., poetry, narrative, exposition) and
categories of content to write about (e.g., science, history, sports)
for which writers’ self-efficacy would vary widely. Third, in the
current study we examined writing self-efficacy’s connections to
only a relatively limited number of writing-related variables and
theoretical issues. As we continue our research, however, we
expect to further probe relationships of different categories of
writing self-efficacy to other motivational and epistemological
variables (e.g., goal orientation, implicit beliefs about writing), as
well as to developmental and gender-related differences in writing
self-efficacy.
Finally, as indicated above, the present studies provide only
minimal information about the sources of students’ writing self-
efficacy beliefs. As we move forward, however, we expect to tie
measures of self-efficacy to students’ writing experiences and to
interventions targeted at specific dimensions of the writing pro-
cess.
In spite of these limitations, we hope that the current research
will suggest new approaches to investigating writing self-efficacy,
along with potential ways of conceptualizing efficacy for other
foundational skills (e.g., reading) or subject-matter areas (e.g.,
mathematics, science). In our view, self-efficacy research becomes
stronger to the extent that it maps onto key processes and capa-
bilities underlying successful performance in domains of interest.
We thus interpret Bandura’s (2006) and Pajares’s (1999) recom-
mendations to make self-efficacy scales domain-specific as not
only implying a need to link self-efficacy items to learners’ de-
velopmental levels and specific contexts but as a call to specify the
domain-related cognitive, procedural, and self-regulatory subskills
underlying successful performance in the domain.
Of course, this is much easier said than done. A basic challenge
is to get the level of specificity “just right”—neither so broad that
we gain minimal understanding about learners’ self-efficacy for
engaging in domain-critical tasks nor so specific that we learn little
about their confidence for engaging generally in a domain. An-
other challenge is that theoretical models for different domains
vary widely; within even a single domain (e.g., reading, mathe-
matics), a given model and associated measures will reflect only
one of many potentially valid frameworks for representing
domain-related self-efficacy. Nonetheless, we believe that the
present study points to the possibility of advances in self-efficacy
research through improved alignment of self-efficacy measures
with theory-based models of student learning and performance.
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Received February 16, 2011
Revision received June 19, 2012
Accepted June 27, 2012 䡲

Call for Papers: Special Issue

Ethical, Regulatory, and Practical Issues in Telepractice
Professional Psychology: Research and Practice will publish a special issue on recent ethical,
regulatory and practical issues related to telepractice. In its broadest definition the term telepractice
refers to any contact with a client/patient other than face-to-face in person contact. Thus, telepractice
may refer to contact on a single event or instance such as via the telephone or by means of electronic
mail, social media (e.g., Facebook) or through the use of various forms of distance visual
technology. We would especially welcome manuscripts ranging from the empirical examination of
the broad topic related to telepractice to those manuscripts that focus on a particular subset of issues
associated with telepractice. Although manuscripts that place an emphasis on empirical research are
especially encouraged, we also would welcome articles on these topics that place an emphasis on
theoretical approaches as well as an examination of the extant literature in the field. Finally,
descriptions of innovative approaches are also welcome. Regardless of the type of article, all articles
for the special issue will be expected to have practice implications to the clinical setting. Manu-
scripts may be sent electronically to the journal at http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/pro/index.aspx
to the attention of Associate Editor, Janet R. Matthews, Ph.D.