General Self-Efficacy Scale

The General Self-Efficacy Scale (GSE) is a 10-item measure assessing beliefs in one's ability to handle difficult situations and to cope with challenges through adaptive effort. Developed by Ralf Schwarzer and Matthias Jerusalem in the mid-1990s, the GSE operationalizes self-efficacy as a generalized confidence in one's capacity to manage stressors across diverse situations, rather than task-specific confidence. The scale has become widely used in health psychology, occupational research, and studies examining resilience and adaptive coping.