The assessment of optimistic self-beliefs: Comparison of the Chinese, Indonesian, Japanese, and Korean versions of the general self-efficacy scale

General self-efficacy is measured by a widely used parsimonious ten-item scale that was developed for use in several cultures. The present paper compares the versions that were examined in samples of 1,068 Chinese, 536 Indonesians, 430 Japanese, and 147 Koreans. The internal consistencies were .85, .80, .91, and .88, respectively. The unidimensional nature of the scale was replicated in all samples. Multilingual item-pattern equivalence was supported by confirmatory factor analyses. Self-efficacy differences between the four languages were discovered. Moreover, an interaction between gender and language emerged.