Effects of Undergraduates' Academic Self-Efficacy on Their Academic Help-Seeking Behaviors: The Mediating Effect of Professional Commitment and the Moderating Effect of Gender

When learners perceive they cannot master what they are trying to learn, they should seek assistance from others who can help them; however, an increasing number of undergraduates are unable to seek help effectively (Kun, Jyh, & Chin, 2013). This is a burning issue because academic help-seeking behaviors are defined as proactive and mastery-oriented learning behaviors that play a crucial role in the long-term complex process of academic learning (Ryan, Pintrich, & Midgley, 2001). Various factors influence how individuals ask for help when they experience difficulty learning, including self-efficacy and negative affect (Meera & Dustin, 2013). Some research suggests that academic help-seeking behaviors take two main forms: one is a negative factor that is designed only to decrease cost of completing tasks by enlisting or avoiding the aid of others, whereas the other is a positive effort to gain the minimum assistance sufficient to achieve independent learning (Karabenick, 2011; Li & Cheung, 1999). In-depth research on help-seeking indicates that students should be considered to differ in the degree that they exhibit different dimensions of help-seeking, rather than that they use distinct patterns or types of help-seeking behaviors (Masyn, Henderson, & Greenbaum, 2010). Thus, it is important to analyze the degree to which different variables influence specific academic help-seeking behaviors.

self-efficacy has a significant influence on whether individuals are able to deal with a difficult situation. For example, learners with high self-efficacy know whom to ask for help to attain better academic performance (Meera & Dustin, 2013). Academic self-efficacy refers to an individual's belief or conviction that s/he can successfully achieve a designated level of performance on an academic task or attain a specific academic goal (Schunk & Pajares, 2002). Nevertheless, some learners with high self-efficacy do not seek help when they need academic assistance (Ryan et al., 2001). Thus, the underlying mechanism connecting academic self-efficacy with academic help-seeking is not clear.

Professional commitment, which refers to one's attitude towards one's profession (Lian, Yang, & Wu, 2005), is an important determinant of whether or not students actively learn. Although professional commitment has been widely studied in the organizational literature, it is not been widely studied in higher education. Professional commitment acts as a positive emotion and attitude that has a significant correlation with academic self-efficacy (Meera & Dustin, 2013). Although the contribution of self-efficacy and commitment to learning behavior have been examined separately, few attempts have been made to examine how the academic self-efficacy and professional commitment of undergraduates jointly influence academic help-seeking behaviors.

Gender also has a significant influence on academic self-efficacy and help-seeking (Drago, Rheinheimer, & Detweiler, 2018). The theory of gender roles proposes that female social behavior is based on interpersonal relationships, and thus, it is plausible to assume that the association between academic self-efficacy and help-seeking may be stronger among women than men (Addis & Mahalik, 2003); however, there is a gap in the research literature about the moderating role of gender on their association. As a result, we expected gender to play a moderating role in the association between academic self-efficacy and academic help-seeking.

METHOD

Five hundred seventy university students were surveyed in China, but only 559 students provided valid responses on the questionnaire used in this study. Incomplete data was addressed by using full information maximum likelihood estimation. The sample was evenly distributed with respect to gender: men (n = 300) and women (n = 259). The students were undergraduates ranging in age from 19 to 26 years (M = 21.67, SD = 1.53), of whom 171 majored in art, 235 majored in science, and 153 majored in engineering. Written informed consent was obtained from all participants, who were guaranteed anonymity and confidentiality before the data were collected.

The participants completed a battery of scales, including an 8-item Academic self-efficacy Survey (χ2 = 38.92, df = 20, p = .00, NFI = 0.943, TLI = 0.951, SRMR = 0.053 RMSEA = 0...