efficacy

(noun)

Ability to produce a desired amount of a desired effect.

Related Terms

Examples of efficacy in the following topics:

  • Additional Resources

    • Critical Issue: Working Toward Student Self-Direction and Personal Efficacy as Educational Goals: Collection of many resources (including video clips) on how to enhance student self-efficacy (http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/students/learning/lr200.htm).
    • Information on self-efficacy: Professor Albert Bandura's web site on self-efficacy.
    • This site collects many learning theories and models in relation to self-efficacy http://www.des.emory.edu/mfp/self-efficacy.html#bandura).

  • Self-Efficacy

    • Self-efficacy affects some of the factors that predict motivation.According to Bandura (1982), self-efficacy is a self-judgment of one's ability to perform a task in a specific domain.However, a high degree of self-efficacy in one domain does not necessarily transfer to other areas of endeavor.High self-efficacy positively affects performance; this good performance will in turn enhance self-efficacy .
    • Anxiety, nervousness, rapid heart rate, sweating; these symptoms often occur when learners face challenges that require competence to overcome.Such physical or mental states reflect learner perceptions of their self-efficacy; these in turn affect their performance.
    • Model: Exposing learners to an non-expert model (peer model) conquering the challenges successfully can help learners increase their motivation and self-efficacy.Another approach to enhance self-efficacy is learners observing the expert model solving problems with specific strategies or skills.
    • Successful experience: It is the teachers' responsibility to help learners achieve academic success by providing challenging, yet attainable tasks .Successful experience is the most important source of fostering self-efficacy.
    • This flash animation illustrates the journey of a teacher and student as the student's self-efficacy increases.

  • Body-Oriented Psychotherapies

    • Research across eight different schools of body-oriented therapies suggests overall efficacy in symptom reduction, though more research is needed.
    • The review of outcome research across different types of body-oriented psychotherapy concludes that the best evidence supports efficacy for treating somatoform/psychosomatic disorders and schizophrenia.
    • Many of the claims regarding the efficacy of body-oriented therapies are considered controversial due to lack of research.

  • Introduction to Biomedical Therapies

    • Two ways in which biological therapies are studied are through efficacy research and effectiveness studies.
    • Placebo-controlled randomized clinical trials, using strict exclusionary criteria when selecting subjects, have traditionally been used to study a psychiatric medication's efficacy (i.e., the ability of the medication to treat the condition better than placebo under controlled conditions).
    • Effectiveness studies are complementary to understanding drug efficacy.

  • Noise as a Barrier to Communication

    • The efficacy of communication is impacted by how much noise there is in the communication channel.

  • Finding New Antimicrobial Drugs

    • Antibiotics, more than any other medicines, have improved the life expectancy of mankind, however, multi-drug resistance has become common in pathogenic bacteria and multiple drugs are losing efficacy.
    • Many achievements of modern medicine, not only treatment of infectious diseases, depend on the availability of efficacious antibiotics, still, the antibacterial development pipeline is slow and the number of new drugs reaching the market is alarmingly low.

  • Psychosurgery

    • Psychosurgery has a low rate of efficacy relative to the risks of the procedures.
    • The reason for the decline of psychosurgery was not only related to ethical concerns and the low rates of efficacy; it was also related to the advancement of more effective and minimally invasive treatments such as psychiatric medications.
    • Discuss the goals, techniques, and efficacy of various types of psychosurgery

  • Maintaining Motivation

    • Rogers, suggests that we protect ourselves based on four factors: (1) the perceived severity of a threatening event, (2) the perceived probability of the occurrence or vulnerability, (3) the efficacy of the recommended preventive behavior, and (4) the perceived self-efficacy.
    • Self-efficacy, the final factor in PMT, is the belief in one's ability to carry out the recommended course of action successfully.
    • A social support system provides encouragement and self-efficacy, helps maintain a positive outlook, and allows an individual to talk about and find ways to deal with the stressor.

  • Magic and Supernaturalism

    • In Polynesian cultures, mana is the force that allows efficacy, or the ability to have an influence in the world.
    • For example, in Polynesian cultures, mana is the force that allows efficacy, or the ability to have an influence in the world.

  • Temporal Motivation Theory

    • Expectancy, or self-efficacy, is the likelihood of success; value is the reward associated with the outcome; impulsiveness is the individual's ability to withstand urges; and delay is the amount of time until the realization of the outcome (i.e., the deadline).
    • Suppose the student really doesn't understand the material and doesn't feel confident that he will be able to grasp it in time for the exam (low self-efficacy, or expectancy).