Belief and achievement: Examining the interplay between academic self-efficacy and weekly academic experiences

Academic self-efficacy is theorised to foster favourable academic outcomes. While academic self-efficacy is believed to have a reciprocal relationship with academic mastery experiences, longitudinal naturalistic investigations are currently lacking. Further, little is known about the short-term relationship between academic self-efficacy and academic failure experiences. This study fills this gap by examining the prospective within-person bidirectional relationships between academic self-efficacy and weekly academic mastery and failure experiences, through a weekly diary study conducted across six weeks in a sample of 153 undergraduates. Investigating the antecedents and consequences of short-term fluctuations in academic self-efficacy has considerable practical relevance, as it can inform efforts to support students' performance, persistence, and overall well-being. Data was analysed using random-intercept cross-lagged panel models. Contrary to expectations, results showed that weekly fluctuations in academic experiences were not prospectively linked to fluctuations in self-efficacy and likewise, fluctuations in self-efficacy were not prospectively linked to fluctuations in academic experiences. Thus, our results provide no evidence for prospective bidirectional associations between minor academic experiences and self-efficacy. However, students' self-efficacy expectations for the upcoming week were associated with their reports of academic experiences during the previous week, measured simultaneously. This suggests that short-term fluctuations in academic self-efficacy may be interlinked with immediate successes and failures. The absence of weekly cross-lagged effects and the presence of concurrent effects between academic self-efficacy and experiences can inform researchers and educators on the timescale of any short-term effects of minor academic experiences.