Characteristics of self-efficacy of high school students and its relationship with test performance in mathematics subject

To explore the influence of self-efficacy on mathematics learning ability, 311 boys and girls from the same grade in a middle school were investigated. We designed an Mathematics Self-Efficacy Scale from Schwarzer General Self-Efficacy (SGSE), and analyzed the differences about all the respondents’ self-efficacy according to gender, region and academic level by SPSS26 statistical software respectively. Generally, the average self-efficacy of girls (1.682) is higher than that of high school students (1.507); Concerning geographical deference, we can see in Table 1 that there were no significant differences in all responses to the other four questions (Q8, 9, 15, 16) except for the one to Q7 (p < 0.05). We believe that geography is not the main factor affecting students’ self-confidence; The difference between the two exams was 0.008 and 0.621, respectively. Noting that 0.008 < 0.05 < 0.621, namely, there was significant deference between Group A, B in early period, group B was separated for lower scores and relative poor learning ability, while this discrepancy phenomenon didn’t appear again after our experimental intervention like setting an peer model. . Our finding supported that the lower an individual possesses self-efficacy and confidence, the greater he/she would make progress in their test performance and learning ability.