General self-efficacy scale
Bandura (1977) put forward the theory of self-efficacy based on the theory of social cognition to describe the ability of an individual to complete a task or accomplish something under a specific situation. This theory has received extensive attention in the area of psychology and education, and its positive effects and influence have been tested. There are a lot of studies have paid attention to the application and effects of self-efficacy theory (Bandura et al., 2001; Schutte & Malouff, 2016). Self-efficacy directly affects learners’ learning cognition, learning motivation, and learning effect. It can be used to investigate and analyze learners’ meta-cognition, feelings, and experience of web-based learning, and it also affected learners’ learning motivation, preferences, and perception of web-based learning tools.
As the importance of self-efficacy and the particularity of the COVID-19 pandemic, learners’ self-efficacy of web-based learning during the pandemic is unknown. Analyzing learners’ web-based learning self-efficacy could be a benefit to understand learners’ learning behavior, condition, and problems. Refer to the General self-efficacy scale (GSES, General self-efficacy scale) of Schwarzer & Jerusalem (1995). Zhang & Schwarzer (1995) modified and designed the Chinese version of the General Self-Efficacy Scale (GSES-C), which has been widely used and has shown good reliability and validity in the research field. Several studies have shown that the reliability of GSES-C is 0.76 (Cronbach’s alpha coefficient) (Sun, Zhong, Xin & Kang, 2018), the first reliability is 0.83, and the second reliability is 0.91 (Wang et al., 2001). This study uses GSES-C to investigate learners’ self-efficacy during the pandemic to figure out the effect of the external environment. The internal consistency of the questionnaire is 0.939 (Cronbach’s alpha), which indicates that the scale tool has high reliability.