Second Phase of the Adaptation Process of the Mathematics Self-Efficacy Survey (MSES) for the Mexican–Spanish Language: The Confirmation

Abstract

There are great economic benefits and qualities of life when a country invests in the development of professionals in STEM areas. Unfortunately, there is a gender gap, as women are lagging behind their peers, as well as minority groups such as Hispanics, who are grossly underrepresented in these careers. Therefore, it is a priority to generate assessing instruments that are adapted to the cultural context of Latino students in their language to attract a more diverse population to STEM areas. This study presents a thorough validation process of the adaptation of the Self-Efficacy Survey (MSES) to the Spanish language and Mexican engineering context. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were conducted with data collected from 683 Mexican engineering students to analyze its validity. The results highlight that the original three dimensions of the MSES still show a sound structure to assess math self-efficacy, and the confirmatory factor analysis eliminated items that were outdated and out of the context of this specific population. As a result, this study presents a 12-item adaptation that could help Latino researchers to collect reliable math self-efficacy data to better understand how their students feel when they learn and practice mathematics.