Clarifying the concepts of confidence and competence to produce appropriate self-evaluation measurement scales

Introduction This paper reviews the literature on self‐evaluation and discusses the findings of a small‐scale qualitative study which explored the terms ‘confidence’ and ‘competence’ as useful measures in a self‐evaluation scale. Four pre‐registration house officers took part in interviews and compl...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Medical education 2000-11, Vol.34 (11), p.903-909
Main Authors: Stewart, Jane, O'Halloran, Catherine, Barton, J Roger, Singleton, Stephen J, Harrigan, Patrick, Spencer, John
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Attitude
Clinical competence
Clinical Competence - standards
education
education, medical, graduate
Educational sciences
Employment
graduate
hospital
Humans
Internship and Residency - standards
Life-long education and employment
medical
medical staff
medical staff, hospital
Medical Staff, Hospital - standards
methods
Psycho-sociological aspects
Self Concept
Self-Assessment
self-evaluation
self‐evaluation, methods
United Kingdom
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Summary:Introduction This paper reviews the literature on self‐evaluation and discusses the findings of a small‐scale qualitative study which explored the terms ‘confidence’ and ‘competence’ as useful measures in a self‐evaluation scale. Four pre‐registration house officers took part in interviews and completed a provisional instrument to assess their perceived competence. Findings Competence and confidence are useful terms for house officers expressing beliefs about their ability to perform their job but the terms should not be used synonymously. In our study, ‘competent’ represented what individuals knew about their ability and was based on the individual’s previous experience of the task. ‘Confident’ described a judgement which influenced whether an individual was willing or not to undertake an activity. Confidence was not necessarily based on known levels of competence and therefore performance of tasks which were unfamiliar to the house officer also involved the assessment of risk. The authors give examples of task and skill scales which may be useful in the process of self‐evaluation by pre‐registration house officers. Conclusions The authors suggest that the process of assessing oneself is complicated, and by its very nature can never be objective or free from the beliefs and values individuals hold about themselves. Therefore self‐evaluation instruments are best used to help individuals analyse their work practices and to promote reflection on performance. They should not be used to judge the ‘accuracy’ of the individual’s evaluation.
ISSN:0308-0110
1365-2923
DOI:10.1046/j.1365-2923.2000.00728.x