Kunskap, förmåga och self-efficacy : Skattningar från nyexaminerade psykologer

Sammanfattning: A challenge for Programmes for Master of Science in Psychology is to provide students with the knowledge and abilities required to handle the psychology profession. Later, when the students enter the profession, they are expected to rely on their competence and ability to perform psychological work as well as understand their knowledge gaps and limitations. How recently graduated psychologists estimate their professional self-efficacy and to what degree their education has helped them develop knowledge and abilities relevant for their profession is explored with survey responses from 1318 recently graduated psychologists in Sweden collected in 2017 - 2019 (Mdn year of birth = 1989, 74% women, 25% men, 0.8% others). Professional self-efficacy was assessed using a modified version of the Occupational Self-Efficacy Scale. An index was used to assess to what degree their education has helped them develop knowledge and abilities. Data were examined using variance and correlation analyses. Our conclusion is that there is a positive relationship between the estimations of professional self-efficacy and knowledge and abilities gained from education that does not differ between the first three years after graduation. The estimates did not differ based on gender. Estimates of knowledge and abilities from education differed between graduates from different universities, which may be due to unexplored differences in educational arrangements and local educational goals. Professional self-efficacy differs significantly between alumni from two out of eight universities, the same ones that rated the highest/lowest on knowledge and abilities.