Clarifying the concepts of confidence and competence to produce appropriate self-evaluation measurement scales

Introduction This paper reviews the literature on self-evaluation and discu sses the findings of a small-scale qualitative study which explored the ter ms 'confidence' and 'competence' as useful measures in a self-evaluation sc ale. Four pre-registration house officers took part in interviews and compl eted a provisional instrument to assess their perceived competence. Findings Competence and confidence are useful terms for house officers expr essing beliefs about their ability to perform their job but the terms shoul d not be used synonymously. In our study, 'competent' represented what indi viduals knew about their ability and was based on the individual's previous experience of the task. 'Confident' described a judgement which influenced whether an individual was willing or not to undertake an activity. Confide nce was not necessarily based on known levels of competence and therefore p erformance of tasks which were unfamiliar to the house officer also involve d the assessment of risk. The authors give examples of task and skill scale s which may be useful in the process of self-evaluation by pre-registration house officers. Conclusions The authors suggest that the process of assessing oneself is co mplicated, and by its very nature can never be objective or free from the b eliefs and values individuals hold about themselves. Therefore self-evaluat ion instruments are best used to help individuals analyse their work practi ces and to promote reflection on performance. They should not be used to ju dge the 'accuracy' of the individual's evaluation.