Tron på den egna förmågan, self-efficacy, utgår från att individen själv försöker utöva påverkan på sin omgivning. Påverkan kan även utövas genom ombud och tilltron till ombudets förmåga att göra något för individen benämns som proxy efficacy. Syftet med studien var att undersöka sambandet mellan self-efficacy och proxy efficacy för utveckling i yrkesrollen. Tre hypoteser och 1 frågeställning formulerades. En enkät besvarades av 85 medarbetare från ett fastighetsföretag i Stockholmsregionen och materialet undersöktes med korrelationer, regressionsanalys, samt t-test. Hypotes 1 fick stöd då proxy efficacy och self-efficacy var positivt korrelerade. Hypotes 3 fick stöd då medarbetare med kortare anställningstid (0-3.9 år) rapporterade högre proxy efficacy jämfört med medarbetare med längre (4-20 år) anställningstid. Proxy efficacy inte kunde predicera self-efficacy (hypotes 2) och inga skillnader i proxy efficacy kunde påvisas mellan könen (frågeställning 1). Resultaten diskuteras utifrån hur proxy efficacy kan definieras samt innebörden i begreppet där mer forskning krävs.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Human Nutrition / David A. Dzewaltowski / Consumption of fruits and vegetables (FV) contributes to healthy growth and development among youth. For effective intervention development, an understanding of the underlying casual influences on consumption is needed. The current dissertation is intended to identify whether influences on youth fruit and vegetable consumption (FVC) vary by age, gender, ethnicity and socioeconomic status (SES). The series of four chapters focus on self-efficacy for FVC and proxy efficacy to influence other adults to provide supportive FV environments. Chapter One reviews studies examining the influences on youth FVC. Consistently across studies, FV preferences and FV availability influenced youth FVC. Chapter Two and Chapter Three report studies documenting that children's confidence (proxy efficacy) to influence parents to make FV available and to influence other adults (after-school staff) to make FV available are independent but related constructs to self-efficacy to eat fruits and self-efficacy to eat vegetables. Differences were found in these constructs according to school demographic variables and youth demographic variables. Chapter Two reports that youth attending elementary schools with lower concentrations of racial/ethnic diversity and higher concentrations of high SES were more confident in influencing their parents to make FV available than youth attending schools with higher concentrations of racial/ethnic diversity and higher concentrations of low SES. Although analyses of cross sectional data collected on elementary-aged youth presented in Chapter 3 showed no demographic differences at the school level, Chapter Four examined longitudinal data across sixth-, seventh- and eighth-grade and found demographic differences using youth level variables. Across the middle school years, youth declined in proxy efficacy and racial/ethnic minority youth declined at a significantly faster rate than white youth. Each year, male and lower SES youth were significantly lower in proxy efficacy than females and higher SES youth, respectively. Thus, school or youth demographic differences in self-efficacy and proxy efficacy may contribute to the understanding of why males and lower SES youth eat less FV than females and higher SES youth.