The creation of the Self-Efficacy For Adolescent Literacy Scale (SEALS)

The purpose of this study was to provide evidence of reliability and validity of the Self- Efficacy for Adolescent Literacy Scale (SEALS). Today, adolescent literacy can be defined and described using an ideological model of literacy that takes into account both the social and cultural contexts of literacy practice. The new literacy studies posit that literacy is more than reading and writing on the page but takes into account the individual and situations in which reading and writing occur. Studies in new literacies have shown that adolescents are using technology as part of their ongoing, regular literacy activity.;Self-efficacy is a motivational construct that measures a person's feelings of capability to perform a specific task. Aspects of self-efficacy that influence adolescents' uses of technology for literacy practices include mastery experience, vicarious experience, and social persuasion.;The SEALS was created with these aspects of contemporary literacy and self-efficacy as its conceptual framework. Items were written and reviewed by experts. The scale was administered to 205 seventh and eighth grade students from two school districts located in the northwestern suburbs of Chicago. The sample was randomly divided into a calibration sample and a validation sample. Exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factory analysis were used to evaluate the factor structure on each sample, respectively, and to validate that factor structure for this population.;While the exploratory factor analysis revealed a simple structure that took into account literacy practices in both traditional and contemporary literacy, the confirmatory factor analysis could not validate the structure for this population. The researcher concluded that the structure of the exploratory factor analysis confirms that there is a need to measure self-efficacy in both traditional and contemporary literacy and that this measure provides insight into adolescents' self-efficacy for literacy practices.