Resumen de Middle school students’ self-efficacy and effort in social studies: mediating and moderating role of value attributed to social studies

İlhan İlter, Gökhan Izgar, Menşure Alkış Küçükaydın

• This study, grounded in expectancy-value theory, examined the relationships between self-efficacy, effort, and value beliefs within the context of social studies. For this purpose, the study tested the mediating and moderating roles of the value attributed to the social studies course in the relationship between self-efficacy and effort in the course. The participants were 379 middle school students selected through convenience sampling from schools in an urban area of the Mediterranean Region of Türkiye. Of these students, 223 were boys (Mage = 12.58, SD = 0.81) and 155 were girls (Mage = 12.23, SD = 0.48). Structural equation modeling (SEM) and SPSS Hayes PROCESS macro were used to analyze the data. The results indicated that self-efficacy was positively associated with the value attributed to the social studies course. Furthermore, the value attributed to social studies significantly predicted students’ effort. The SEM results showed that the attributed value to the course mediated the relationship between self-efficacy and effort. In addition, the value attributed to social studies significantly moderated this relationship, indicating that the positive association between self-efficacy and effort was stronger for students who placed a high value on social studies.