Factors affecting self-efficacy towards academic performance: a study on Polytechnic students in Malaysia

The main motivation behind this research is to presents the factors that influence self-efficacy toward academic performance among students of two Polytechnic institutes. The self-efficacy is a key concept in social cognitive theory that leads students' perception about their own ability to successfully solve a task or to learn an activity or to perform behaviors at desired levels. Early research evidence shows that there are factors that influence self-efficacy, namely; mastery experience, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion and psychology arousal. The data for this study was gathered using a questionnaire survey through probability sampling. Few statistical technics like mean, standard division, correlation and regression have been employed. This study was found that there is significant relation between self-efficacy and academic performance. Besides, the factors such as mastery experience, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion and psychology arousal totally influenced self-efficacy. Key words: Self-efficacy, academic performance, Malaysia