comparison between Florida State University System's female administrators and female faculty in their personal attributes and self-efficacy beliefs

The purpose of this study was to determine whether significant differences existed between female administrators and female faculty in public higher education in their perceptions of personal self-efficacy and their personal attributes. This was achieved by examining the relationship between the criterion variable, position held by females in higher education and the predictor variables, which included male and female characteristics, general self-efficacy beliefs, and social self-efficacy beliefs. A survey package including a demographics section, Personal Attributes Questionnaire (PAQ) and Self-Efficacy Scale for Adults (SES) was mailed to 200 female administrators and 200 female faculty employed by Florida's State University System. A stratified random selection was employed to obtain the 200 female faculty in order to ensure discipline diversity. The 200 female administrators were selected from the most current data available from the 10 universities' 1995-1996 graduate school catalogs and the 1995-1996 Directory of Women in Educational Leadership in Florida, published jointly from the Office of Postsecondary Education in Florida and Florida State University's Hardee Center for Women in Higher Education. Each scale and subscale was analyzed utilizing the analysis of variance (ANOVA) procedure. Three null hypotheses were tested at the.05 confidence level and then adjusted to the.0125 confidence level by employing the Bonferroni procedure. The employment of the Bonferroni statistical procedure eliminates the rejection of discrepant test outcomes due to Type I errors. Results of the ANOVA test applied to the General Self-Efficacy subscale were statistically significant at the .01 confidence level. Outcomes of this study proved to be significant to the growing body of women's research in that it denoted statistically significant results indicating that female administrators had a higher perception of general self-efficacy than female faculty. General self-efficacy is based on the premise that if an individual has a history of successful outcomes, than that individual will expect more successful outcomes than failures. General self-efficacy (identified as an internal barrier) may in fact be what is hindering more women from seeking administrative positions in higher education.