Developing & Validating a Measure for PR Professionals ’ Self-efficacy

For the past three decades self-efficacy studies have been conducted in social science and other fields of academic endeavor. However, sufficient evidence has clearly shown that this research interest seems to neglect Public Relations (i.e. PR) discipline as there are hardly traceable works connected to this important field of study. This work therefore, represents an attempt to develop PR professionals’ self-efficacy scale to measure the ability of PR professionals in carrying out their duties. Exploratory factor analysis was conducted with PR experts and the result has shown a required factor loading for 23 out of total 24 items. Equally, the six operationalized dimensions were all consistent when confirmatory factor analysis was conducted. Similarly, discriminant and convergent validity tests which guarantees the instrument as valid for measuring Public Relations practitioners’ self-efficacy were also found to be fit.


Introduction
In the last 3 decades, Public Relations (PR) has achieved tremendous expansion as a professional field of study.This can be observed through the lenses of different communication scholars across the globe.The seminal works of theorizing and conceptualizing the field by the likes of (Grunig & Hunt, 1984); PR roles studies, (Grunig & Dozier, 2003); issues related to knowledge and skills as reviewed Gregory (2008) is more than adequately covered by professional bodies (such as CIPR, 2006;PRSA, 1993PRSA, , 1994PRSA, , 2006) ) and many text books such as Cutlip, Allen, and Center 2006); PR research paradigm and approaches; (Grunig & Grunig, 2008;Holtzhausen, 2000;L'Etang, 2013;Toth, 2002), among many other related scholarly output.
More recently, researchers have discussed the needs for competencies, (Flynn, 2014;Gregory, 2008;Tench & Moreno, 2015); that PR practitioners should learn to effectively carry out their responsibilities.These scholars have underscored the need for practitioners to learn more competencies as a way of making their work sophisticated in today's competitive world (Abdullah & Threadgold, 2008;Amujo & Melewar, 2011); .While scholars have focused on competencies of PR practitioners, however, what seems to attract little attention; and not adequately studied is the need to look into practitioners' abilities in carrying out specified jobs.
Incidentally, for the past three decades self-efficacy studies are conducted in social science and pure science researches to ascertain the perceived ability of respondents/informants towards a number of tasks.These can be seen in the works of Guo, Piasta, Justice, and Kaderavek (2010) on teachers, Lee (2014) on hotel employees, (Kamali, Vaezi, Shafiee, & Mollavali;Lee, 2014) on High school heads, Burch (2008) on health, (Chun-Mei, Chien-Hua, & HSIAO, 2011) on entrepreneurship etc.But as earlier observed, studies on PR practitioners' self-efficacy cannot be easily traced in the body of related literature.
Self-efficacy is defined as belief in ones capability to mobilize the motivation, cognitive resources and course of action needed to meet given situational demand.Bandura (2006) described it as comprehensive summery or judgment regarding the ability of a person to perform a particular task.Stajkovic and Luthans (1998), have meta-analyzed that self-efficacy explains 38% of peoples' performance.It is the best concept to represent "self", compared with other related concepts such as; self-esteem, locust control, expectancy, personality etc.In view of this regard, work is trying to argue the need to study the self-efficacy of PR practitioners, especially at a time when they ability to perform well their profession is challenged (Abdullah & Threadgold, 2008;Amujo & Melewar, 2011;Valentini, 2013).As a start, the work would focus on developing and validation PR professional self-efficacy scale.

Literature Review
As elucidated by (A Bandura, 1994), Individuals with high sense of efficacy usually consider difficult task as something that can be mastered and solved, rather than threat that should be avoided.Hence, such efficacious outlook posters intrinsic interest and deep engrossment in activities they performed.They usually set challenging targets and pursue them with outmost vigor.Bandura and Wood (1989) also described it as a dynamic constraint which changes over time.Bandura and his colleagues have thus come up with the concept of self-efficacy which deals with peoples' belief in their capability to change the environment through their actions.Caesens and Stinglhamber (2014), observed that people who trust in their efficacy are more likely to initiate actions and persist in their efforts.
However, unless employees believe that they can gather necessary behavior, cognitive and motivational resources, they may end up dwelling on the formidable aspects of the work, exert insufficient effort and as a result fail (Stajkovic & Luthans, 1998).Therefore as a matter of capability assessment of public relations practitioners, there is need to focus on practitioners' ability to perform an action which predicts their behavioral performance.
Numerous studies tested the predictive nature of self-efficacy on people's performance.This can be seen in the likes of Webb, Vandiver, and Jeung (2015) who tested positive how self-efficacy can enhance students' performance.It was also established that self-efficacy predicts students long-term achievement, (Parker, Marsh, Ciarrochi, Marshall, & Abduljabbar, 2014), which found that students mathematics self-efficacy is enhances them to face future challenges in life.Whereas, Hassall, Arquero, Joyce, and Gonzalez (2013) found the connection relations between self-efficacy and communication apprehension.Those who are self-efficacious on both oral and written communication tend to be highly efficacious in communicating with publics.
The concept also enhances people's ability to solve problems, face difficult task and solve them.Piperopoulos and Dimov (2015), on their work found that student's entrepreneurial efficacy is positively related to practically based courses.Whereas focusing on PhD students, those who completed research courses and have publish journal articles are found to be more efficacious than others who have not (Lambie, Hayes, Griffith, Limberg, & Mullen, 2014).While Niu (2010), has found that self-efficacy is positively related to career commitment among employees, thus to check on how practitioners are committed to career, or profession it is necessary to check on their self-efficacy.
In the same vain, self-efficacy is also related to peoples attitude which predict how they behave as individuals (Kamali et al.;Lee, 2014).Evaluating the ability of practitioners can tell the extent to which they can perform as employees.Thus, it can be simply argued that self-efficacy is incremental in nature; it is therefore necessary to routinely check the performance of employees as regards to what they can or cannot do, in other words, their strength and weakness, on specific task performance.Assessment of employees' self-efficacy can tell whether they are capable of accomplishing a specified task, which affects how they perform at a particular time or not.

Self-efficacy Scale across Disciplines
Cursory look into self-efficacy scale literature has proven that scholars have developed different number of scales to measure self-efficacy based on purpose and respondents' professions.In the work of Tsai, Chaichanasakul, Zhao, Flores, and Lopez (2013), they developed instrument focusing on self-efficacy strength, (1983) developed scale focusing on career decision making self-efficacy; Schwarzer and Jerusalem (1995), focused on optimism and how to fight stress.
On the other hand, Brenowitz and Tuttle (2003), developed instrument on nutrition teachers of elementary school; while Resnick and Jenkins (2000), developed scale on exercise among others.The founder of self-efficacy model Albert Bandura (2006); in his guide for constructing self-efficacy scale has given developed scales for; regulating eating habit; children self-efficacy; problem solving self-efficacy; pain management; teachers self-efficacy; parental self-efficacy, exercise self-efficacy etc.Even though these number of scales target at measuring ability; by extension, they are all organized to reflect particular profession or purpose.As earlier stated, self-efficacy is issue specific.However, any attempt to measure PR professionals' self-efficacy, should also reflect the PR professional domain.Thus, this work conceptualizes PR self-efficacy scale, to ascertain its reliability and validity.

Developing Professional Efficacy Scale
In order to develop scale for measuring PR practitioners' self-efficacy as well as confirming its reliability, the following steps were adopted:

Conceptualizing PR Professional Self-efficacy
Profession is described as occupational term that shows domain of expertise (Abdullah & Threadgold, 2008;Chung & Choi, 2012).While self-efficacy is the persons perceived capability to perform actions to produce attainments.Thus, professional self-efficacy is the public relations practitioners' ability to carry out his professional duties and satisfy the vision and mission of his/her organization/client has an expert.High professional self-efficacy predicts possibilities of high performance, while poor professional efficacy suggests the need for reflection by the practitioner to look in-ward and re-invigorate himself to achieve target goals.

Operationalizing PR Self-efficacy
As an attempt, a team of scholars comprising of professor, Associate professor, and a PhD scholar, all in communication field and their postgraduate students resolved to adopt (Grunig & Hunt, 1984) four (4) model of PR profession (which include publicity, persuasion, two-way asymmetrical and two-way symmetrical) for testing PR practitioners self-efficacy.The pilot test as planned was conducted in Nigeria.This is not unconnected with the popularity of the model in reflecting the job tactics of PR practitioners' job tactics of Nigerian practitioners.In the work of Amujo and Melewar (2011), where 60 Nigerian PR newsletters were analyzed, it was found that the contents reflect the practice of these four PR models.On the other hand, in trying to capture what is not clearly represented in the model which is also present in African PR practice, (Holtzhausen, Petersen, & Tindall, 2003), included African Dialogic Model; which is based on two-way African Dialogue using oral medium is also added to be the fifth dimension.Whereas, Grunig, Grunig, Sriramesh, Huang, and Lyra (1995); in their work on India, Taiwan and Greece, (Kiambi & Nadler, 2012) in Kenya and Wu and Baah-Boakye (2009) have also discussed the presence of Personal Influence Model, in these developing nations.For the fact that Nigeria is also a developing nation which shares some similarities with the above mentioned, this dimension was also added.As a result, the study is conceptualized to have six dimensions for public relations practitioners' self-efficacy.

PR Professional Self-efficacy Dimensions
1. Publicity self-efficacy: This is the PR practitioner's ability to produce messages aimed at publicizing or propagating his organization/client's needs in accordance with the organizations visions and missions.
2. Persuasion self-efficacy: This is the practitioner's perceived ability to persuade publics towards accepting the viewpoints of his /her organization/client.This can be achieved through the use of press release, press briefing, conferences etc.
3. Two-way asymmetrical self-efficacy: two-way asymmetrical on the other hand deals with PR practitioner's belief on his ability to conduct researchers such as public attitude surveys to ascertain how best to send messages to publics.It also involves his/her ability to evaluate messages he has rooted to determine how effectively they serve on the sides of the publics.4. Two-way Symmetrical self-efficacy: two-way symmetrical has to do with practitioner's perceive belief on his ability to establish and maintain positive relationship between organization and its publics by fostering two-way professional manuscript to ensure amicable resolve of contending issues, respect for one another and maintaining interwoven relationship.5. Africa Dialogic Model: Africa dialogic self-efficacy describe the ability of PR practitioner to develop and root public relations messages using two-way dialogue based on African "oral nature" and "peoples alignment" through the use of short stories, songs, dramas and organizing of mass rallies.
6. Personal-influence self-efficacy: personal influence self-efficacy described the perceived ability of public relations practitioner to create contact using his/her own personal connection for the benefits of hi/her organization.In PR, it is very common that political leaders and corporations tend to appoint public relations executives that excel in especially journalism career.This is not unconnected with the fact that they come with wide variety of experiences which say a lot on how far they can perform.

Designing the Questionnaire
In designing the questionnaire, number of steps were taken, the first step is the use of the 16 point existing questionnaire for the four dimension model developed by (Grunig & Hunt, 1984).Each dimension has four items.Similarly, Holtzhausen et al. (2003) four items for personal influence model were also adopted.For personal Influence model, four items were developed by panel of expert that conducted this study after intensive literature search.
The instruments were modified to reflect self-efficacy items.For examples, one of the original items reads: The purpose of public relations is to get publicity for an organization.To reflect measurement of self-efficacy, it has been changed to "I can ensure necessary publicity for my company/organization by the media".As described in Bandura, (2006), in measuring self-efficacy, researcher is targeting at what we "can" not what we "will".What a person can, reflect capability, whereas what a person will represents intention.The word self-efficacy is avoided throughout the questionnaire.Bandura discourages the use of self-efficacy; instead change to words like, "appraisal inventory" to encourage practitioners to give frank answers, which has been carefully observed in this study.
Thirdly, the instrument was sent to experts, for proper critiquing.Interviews were also conducted with three Nigeria Public Relations scholars after giving them the instrument to receive their views on the content and desirability of the items.After synthesizing comments and feedbacks, 1 item was removed in second dimension (persuasion), another item was added in dimension four, (two-way symmetrical).The final copy was submitted to a linguist in Nigeria who has media and PR practice experience for editing to match with Nigerian used concepts.

Location
The questionnaire was administered in Nigeria, at the venue of 3 days annual general meeting of 2016 organized by Nigerian Institute of Public Relations (NIPR).This is the highest chartered PR body in Nigeria.The Institute licensed practitioners who are qualified to work as professionals.Thus, participant in the pilot study are all licensed practitioners.140 set of questionnaire were distributed, 94 returned and 90 found fit for analysis.

Exploratory Factor Analysis
At the beginning, Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin test (KMO) was conducted which result is 0.78.Bartletts test of Sphericity was also significant (p<0.00).These two results are enough for completing Exploratory Factor Analysis.In the instrument, we have 24 total items.As can be seen in Table 1 all the factors have loaded above 0.5 except item 16 which has on the other hand cross loaded in two dimensions.As a result, the item was deleted.Apart from that, all the remaining 23 items have loaded in their respective domains based on our operationalizati Persuasion efficacy is the second dimension with three (3) loaded factors and total shared variance at 13.7%.Item 7 loaded high, which states, "I can monitor public response about my organization/client in the social media".The mean is 11.1% ± 2.2 out of the maximum of 15.The internal consistency using Crombach's Alpha is 0.80.
The third dimension is two-way asymmetrical self-efficacy which also has four (4) items loaded.The total variance 11.1%, item 10 has the highest loading which states "I can conduct research (after completing a program) to determine how successful our program is".Total mean is 15.0% ± 2.4 out of maximum of 20.Crombach's Alpha coefficient is 0.80.
The fourth dimension is two-way symmetrical with four (4) loaded items and total variance of 8.7.Item with highest factor loading is "I can persuade the attitudes and behaviors of management as much as I can persuade that of publics".The mean is 15.7% ± 2.2 out of the maximum of 20.The Crombach's alpha is 0.83.
The fifth dimension is African dialogic self-efficacy which has total variance of 6.3% with four (4) loaded items.
Item 17 which has the highest loading is "I can organize the use of oral communication techniques such as: dance, songs or proverbs to foster relationship with our publics/customers.The mean is 14.43% ± 3.09 out of the maximum of 20.The Crombach's alpha is 0.87.
The sixth dimension is personal influence self-efficacy and the final dimension with four (four) factor loaded and variance at 5.5%.Item number 24 has the highest loading which says "I can establish personal relations with journalist (blogger etc.) help have my news published/heard".Total mean is 14.9 ± 2.6 out of the maximum of 20.Crombach's alpha coefficient stands for 0.77.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis
In the process of conducting confirmatory factor analysis, all the 23 items were put to test.AMOS software version 21.0 was employed.All the items revealed acceptable factor loadings; ie 0.6 according to Bagozzi and Yi (1988) except item 24 which is 0.47 approximately 0.5.Its inclusion can be supported by the work of Hair et al.
(2010) which confirmed that for items newly developed, 0.5 loading is acceptable.Though this item has been developed long a go, this probably is among the first attempts it is used for self-efficacy scale.The graphical presentation in figure 1 shows the predictive relavance of the various dimensions to the model and their factor loadings.On the hand, figure 2 shows the correlations among the six dimentions and their factor loadinds.

Discussion
As clearly stated, the aim of this study is to test the validity and reliability of instrument to modified/developed to measure self-efficacy of public relations practitioners in Nigeria.The pilot study's instrument is divided into six dimensions, comprising; publicity, persuasion, two-way asymmetrical, two-way symmetrical, African dialogic and personal influence.Virtually all the dimensions stood the test and factors have loaded to above 0.5 as can be observed in table 1.Similarly, confirmatory factor analysis has shown how all the six dimensions have contributed in explaining PR professional self-efficacy scale as can be seen in table.However, item no 16 was deleted because of its low factor loading.The data was collected from certified public relations practitioners in Nigeria as a way of testing their capability to accomplish their organizational objective.The study has finally proved the prediction that the stated dimensions and items reflect how PR is practiced in Nigeria.Thus, what has been operationalized and tested in this work is a reflection of PR practice in Nigeria.Hitherto, more conceptualization should be made attain comprehensive understanding of self-efficacy in PR discipline.

Conclusion
Giving the above analysis, it could be seen that the aim of this pilot work is to ascertain the validity and reliability of this modified instrument for testing public relations practitioners' self-efficacy.Secondly, the instrument has been found to be consistent using Crombach's alpha coefficient.The data was collected using convenient sampling.One of the shortcomings of this work is sample which is too small.But eventually, the instrument has passed CFA test.All the 6 dimensions have successfully explained the proposed PR professionals' self-efficacy scale.The implication of the current study lies on the instruments relevance in measuring employees' ability in carrying out stated duties especially during employment scheme, before or after training exercise.
It should finally be observed that, the importance of self-efficacy in PR practitioners' performance cannot be over emphasized.Practitioners with high efficacy tend to perceive difficult tasks as threats that should be avoided.At this era of professional scramble, and rapid technological changes, practitioners must take charge of their destiny and remain positive on their ability to carry out their function, developing measure at which practitioners can be tested to ascertain their level of ability is timely if not necessary.

Table 1 .
Factor Loading from Exploratory Factor AnalysisAs can be observed in Table2, the first dimension is publicity self-efficacy; where four factors are loaded in this domain.The total shared variance of professionals' responses is 24.7%.Item 1 with the highest loading in this dimension states: I can ensure necessary publicity for my company or organization by the media.Total mean is for 15.0% ± 2.8 out of the maximum of 20. (4 items multiply by 5 scale category) with a reliability of 0.88.This suggests an excellent ability of this scale to represent the view point of professionals in this domain.

Table 2 .
Descriptive Statistic and Exploratory Factor Analysis