What drives change? Characterizing scientific self-efficacy development in undergraduate research experiences

Undergraduate research experiences (UREs) and course-based UREs (CUREs) promote students’ scientific self-efficacy growth. Yet, how self-efficacy develops during research is not understood. Furthermore, what students do during research varies in ways that likely affect self-efficacy development. We sought to address these knowledge gaps by collecting scientific self-efficacy data from CURE and URE students at nine universities at the beginning, middle, and end of a single term of research. We leveraged a theoretical advancement, latent state-trait theory-revised, to disaggregate the components of students’ self-efficacy into stable or trait-like self-efficacy and dynamic or state-like self-efficacy. We determined that students’ scientific self-efficacy was moderately stable during their research, with the most malleable component being beliefs in their abilities to figure out data collection and explain results. We also surveyed students ∼45 times throughout their research experience to test the extent to which research hours and types of research tasks contributed to self-efficacy development. We found that students who completed more analytic tasks experienced significantly more self-efficacy growth than students who completed other types of tasks, while time spent on research was not influential. Our results illustrate the importance of engaging students in analytic tasks during CUREs and UREs for fostering their self-efficacy development.