Investigation of Relationship Between Levels of Self-Efficacy and Self-Care in Middle School Adolescents in Turkey

In this research it is aimed to investigate the relationship between the self-efficacy and self-care levels in adolescents which are aged between 11 - 15 years old. For this purpose, the socio-demographic characteristics of the students are utilized including, age, grade, gender, longest residence, family type, current residence location, family structure, academic success status, income-outcome balance, chronic diseases, education level of mother, education level of father, mother profession, father profession of students. Accordingly, the most known scales namely general self-efficacy scale and self-care agency scale were considered to investigate related characteristics of adolescents from Mersin Province of Turkey. It is implied from results that there is a significant relationship between the self-efficacy scale scores with the academic success status, family type and family structure characteristics of these adolescents. As well, there existed a significant relationship between the mean scores of the self-care scale with the age, grade, education level of their mothers, economic status of their families, academic success status and their family types. Based on the results, especially in the case of the single-parent type family structures, conducting a democratic family discipline and academic success status of students lead to increase in the self-efficacy belief of adolescents. In the similar way, the education level of mothers, economic status of the families, achieved high academic success and holding a democratic family discipline resulted in the high self-care agency level of the adolescents. Additionally, as the self-efficacy level of the adolescents increased, the self-care agency level of the adolescents may be increased additionally.