Neighborhood socioeconomic status and perceptions of self-efficacy

Following Bandura's (1982) social-cognitive theory of self-efficacy, Wilson (1996) hypothesizes a relationship between neighborhood-level socioeconomi c status and individual-level perceptions of efficacy. This article evaluat es this hypothesis and pursues the following research questions: (1) Are th e socioeconomic characteristics of individual's neighborhoods related to th eir level of self-efficacy? and (2) if so, is this relationship simply due to lower individual-level socioeconomic status (SES), or is neighborhood SE S associated with self-efficacy over and above individual-level SES? This p roject links individual-level data from a national sample of adults in the United States (Americans Changing Lives Survey [1986]) with contextual info rmation from the 1980 census on the poverty and unemployment characteristic s of respondents' neighborhoods. Results indicate that high proportions of neighborhood unemployment and public assistance are associated with low lev els of self-efficacy above and beyond individual-level SES.