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SELF-EFFICACY AS PREDICTOR OF PSYCHOLOGICAL WELLBEING AMONG

EMPLOYEES OF SELECTED ORGANISATIONS IN LAGOS.
*
OSHILAJA, Oluwaseun Otete [email protected]

AKINBODE, Gabriel Aunde [email protected]

UMUKORO, Omonigho Simon [email protected]

Department of Psychology
Faculty of Social Sciences,
University of Lagos, Akoka, Lagos, Nigeria.
[email protected]
*Corresponding Author

ABSTRACT
This study investigated self-efficacy as predictor of psychological well-being among employees of selected
organisations in Lagos. The major objectives of the study included: determining the relationship between self-efficacy
and psychological wellbeing; and investigating the influence of exogenous variables on psychological well-being among
employees in some selected service and manufacturing organisations in Lagos. 515 employees from selected
organisations across telecommunications, manufacturing and banking industries participated in this study. The study
employed a survey method for data collection and used the following instruments: Index of Self Esteem, Self-Efficacy
Scale, Schutte Emotional Intelligence Scale, Becks Depression Inventory- II, Organisational Frustration Scale and Ryff
Psychological Wellbeing Scale. The hypothesised relationships were tested with Pearson correlation analysis and
multiple regression analysis at 0.05 level of significance using SPSS version 20. The result of the data analyzed
revealed that there was significant positive relationship between employees’ self-efficacy and psychological well-being
(r=.56, p<0.5). Self-esteem, self-efficacy and organisational frustration were found to be significant predictors of
psychological wellbeing among employees in selected organisation. Specifically, self-efficacy contributed 18.7% of the
observed variance in selected employee’s psychological well-being (Beta=.187; t=4.329 at p< 0.05). The implications
of the findings for effective human resource management were offered.

Keywords: Psychological well-being, Self-efficacy, Employees, Exogenous variables.

1.0 INTRODUCTION

1.1 BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY

In some indigenous and international organisations over the years, policies appear to be made
for organisational productivity while maximizing profit with little or no concerns for the wellbeing
of employees in these organisations (Fapohunda, 2012).
Experiences under these policies which are descriptive of long, uncertain and unpredictable
working hours; unclear job descriptions likely deny some employees happiness. This experience
may undermine some employees’ psychological well-being. Undermined psychological well-being
among employees may be displayed through consistent negative emotions on and off the job
such as worry, anxiety, tension, frustrations, displacement of anger, and dissatisfaction with their
work conditions, role at work, self, family, society unto severe states of depression.

Psychological well-being according to Ryff (1982) is described as a state of optimal

psychological functioning rather than mere emotion of happiness, involving six broad facets of
self-acceptance, sense of personal growth, purpose in life, positive relations, autonomy and
environmental mastery.
Psychological wellbeing or subjective well-being deals with people’s feelings in their day to day
life (Bradburn, 1969; Campbell, 1976). These feelings may vary from negative ones (like anxiety,
depression, dissatisfaction etc.) to positive ones (like elation, satisfaction). Bradburn(1969)

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specified that: an individual will be high in psychological well-being in the degree to which he has
an excess of positive over negative affect and will be low in well-being in the degree to which
negative affect predominates over positive.
One of the most important goals which individuals as well as societies strive for is psychological
wellbeing. So many terms such as happiness, satisfaction, hope, positive affect, positive mental
health, well-being and quality of life have been used in the literature synonymously and
interchangeably.

Self- efficacy according to Bandura (1997) is "the belief in one’s capabilities to organize and
execute the courses of action required to manage prospective situations". In other words, self-
efficacy is a person’s belief in his or her ability to succeed in a particular situation. Bandura in
1997 described these beliefs as determinants of how people think, behave, and feel. Hence, an
individual’s self-efficacy plays a major role in how goals, tasks, and challenges are approached.
A low state of psychological well-being seem to create physical and mental health problems to
workers which in turn is likely to have an impact on employers and businesses directly through
increased absenteeism, turnover, accidents or errors on job, reduced production and increased
costs. In many developed countries, 35%-45% of absenteeism from work is due to mental health
problem or low psychological well-being (WHO, 2003). In United Kingdom, mental health
problems are the second most important reason for absence from work which adversely affects
national economy.
Low state of psychological wellbeing is expressed in behaviour and may lead to mental illness.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO, 2019), one in for Nigerians of a population of
about 200 million are suffering from some sort of mental illness. A lower level of Psychological
wellbeing may well lead to serious illness, including cardiovascular disease, problems with blood
sugar control, such as diabetes and immune system malfunctions (Chandola, Britton,Brunner,
Hemingway, Malik, Kumari, Badrick, Kivimaki& Marmot, 2008). Whether, self-efficacy has a
significant influence on psychological well-being among employees in banking,
telecommunications and manufacturing industry in Lagos, is what has not been examined in
recent literature. Thus, the purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of self-efficacy on
psychological wellbeing among employees in the selected organisations in Lagos. This is
important as the study gives awareness to society on how work conditions impact upon
psychological wellbeing and mental health of employees. Moreover, through the analysis made
by this study, organisations and relevant labour laws will have a new approach to conditions of
work that will impact positively on employee well-being while productivity is also enhanced.

RESEARCH HYPOTHESES
1. Self-efficacy will emerge as significant correlate of psychological wellbeing among
employees in the selected organisations in Lagos.
2. Exogenous variables will have a significant joint and independent influence on
Psychological well-being among employees in the selected organisations in Lagos.

METHOD
Research Design
In the study, the researcher adopted ex-post facto research design.

Setting
This study was carried out at selected organisations of the research participants who are
employees drawn from branches of organisations which include First bank, Access bank, Sterling
bank, 7up bottling company, Chi Limited, Nigerian bottling company, 9mobile, Airtel, and MTN

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under Ikeja Local government area of Lagos state. The choice of Lagos was made because it has
the highest aggregation of commercial banks, telecommunication and manufacturing
organisations with casual and permanent employees for ease of data collection. Ikeja local
government offers accessibility to organisations across the three industries of interest within same
geographical location.

Participants:
The population of this research were casual employees and a comparative group of permanent
employees of selected organisations, across the telecommunications, manufacturing and banking
industries in Lagos state.
The study adopted a sample of 515 research participants who were randomly selected from
conveniently available organisations namely: First bank, Access bank, Sterling bank, 7up bottling
company, Chi Limited, Nigerian bottling company, 9mobile, Airtel, and MTN, under Ikeja Local
government area of Lagos state. Two hundred and forty eight (48.2%) of the employees were
males, two hundred and sixty seven (51.8%) were females. One hundred and sixty nine (32%)
employees participated from telecommunications, one hundred and seventy three (33.6%) were
from manufacturing and another one hundred and seventy three (33.6%) were from banking
Industry. One hundred and thirty five (26.2%) permanent and three hundred and eighty (73.8%)
casual employees participated in this study.
Multistage sampling technique was employed as sampling was done at successive stages.

Instruments

Demographic questionnaire
This was used to collect the bio data of participants. This includes gender, age, highest academic
qualification, present job position, industry and years of job experience.
Further data was collected using the following instruments:

Index of Self-esteem (ISE)

It is a twenty five item inventory designed by Hudson (1982) to measure the self-perceived and
the other-perceived views of the self-held by a person. The inventory is designed for individuals
above twelve years of age. Hudson (1982) on the reliability of the inventory, reported coefficient
alpha of 0.93and a two hours test retest co-efficient of .92while Onighaiye (1996) obtained
concurrent validity coefficient of 0.46 by correlating ISE with scale C (interpersonal sensitivity sub
scale) of the Symptoms Check List (SCL-90) by Derogatis, Lipman and Covi (1973). The lower a
score is below the norm, the higher the client’s self-esteem. ISE measures how poor a client’s
self-esteem is.

Self-efficacy Scale (SES)

It is a thirty item inventory designed by Sherer, Maddox, Mercandate, Prentice-Dum, Jacobs and
Rogers (1982) to measure self-perceived competence, effectiveness on work performance and
efficacy in handling social relationships. Sherer,Maddox, Mercandate, Prentice-Dum, Jacobs and
Roger (1982) reported Cronbach alpha internal consistency reliability coefficient of 0.86 while
Ayodele (1998) obtained a concurrent validity coefficient of 0.23 by correlating SES with
mathematics anxiety rating scale-revised (Plake& Parker, 1982).

Schutte Emotional Intelligence Scale (SEIS)

It was designed by Schutte, Maloouf, Hall, Haggerty, Cooper, Golden, and Dornheim (1998) to
measure individual’s emotional intelligence. It is a 33-item inventory designed to access an

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individual’s perception of the extent to which he or she can identify, understand, harness, and
regulate emotions in self and others. Schutte, Maloouf, Hall, Haggerty, Cooper, Golden, and
Dornheim (1998) reported an adequate co-efficient of internal consistency reliability (r=0.87-0.90)
and Cronbachs Alpha reliability (r=0.70-0.85).

Beck Depression Inventory -II (BDI-II)

The twenty one item inventory was designed by Beck (1996) to detect and analyse the intensity
of depression in individuals above 13 years. Ambrosini, Metz, Bianchi, Rabinovich and Undie
(1991) reported a good internal consistency, with a Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of around 0.85.
The validity strength of the inventory was reported by Adefemi, Aloba and Oladimeji (2017) as
they found out that BDI-II correlated significantly (p=0.36) with the total Positive and Negative
Suicidal Ideation Inventory scores.

Organisational Frustration (OFS)

Organisational frustration scale was developed by Spector (1975). This instrument consists of 29
item inventory designed to assess the frustration level of individuals in organisations. A coefficient
alpha of .88 was reported by Spector (1975) for a sample of medical employees. Dieke (1997)
correlated the organisational Frustration (OF) equivalent with frustration Anxiety inventory by
Girdano and Evenly (1979) and obtained a concurrent validity of .098.

Psychological Well-being Scale

The psychological well-being of the research participants was assessed with Ryff Psychological
Well-being Scale having 18 items. Ryff (1995) reported reliability estimates for the psychological
well-being scale ranging from 0.87 to 0.93 for coefficient alpha. He also reported Cronbach’s
alpha reliability of 0.94. Van-Dierendock (2005) reported internal consistency with reliability
coefficients of the subscales ranging from 0.72 to 0.81 each.

Procedure
The participants were contacted by the researcher at their different organisations and informed
on the purpose of the study in order to gain access to distribute the questionnaires. Consent was
sought through their managers and other significant authorities. The researcher liaised and further
explanations were made on the research objectives to each participant and his or her voluntary
participation in the study was sought for before the questionnaires were administered individually.
At the end, all participants were thanked for filling the questionnaires. The study recovered five
hundred and fifteen questionnaires that were properly filled. The test instruments were collated
and scored in line with the relevant manual and later subjected to the appropriate statistical
analyses.

Data Analysis
For this research, demographic variables were analysed with descriptive statistics such as mean,
standard deviation, percentage and frequency table. Hypotheses were tested using Pearson
correlation analysis and multiple regression analysis, at 0.05 level of significance. Statistical
Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 20 was employed to analyse the data.

RESULTS

This chapter presents and describes results of all the statistical analyses of data for this study.

Hypotheses Testing

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This aspect of the result presents the outcome of analysed data using relevant statistics.
H1: Self-efficacy will emerge as significant correlate of psychological well-being among
employees in the selected organisations in Lagos.
This hypothesis was tested using Pearson correlation analysis. Result is presented in Table 1

Table 1: Summary of Pearson’s ‘r’ correlation showing relationship between self-efficacy and psychological
well-being among employees of selected organisations in Lagos.

Mean S.D. N R Sig

Self-Efficacy 78.66 16.82 515
Psychological Wellbeing 87.09 21.91 515 .56** <.05
**. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).

Table 1 shows Pearson correlation coefficient was computed to assess the relationship between
self-efficacy and psychological well-being among permanent and casual employees of selected
organisations in Lagos. The result shows that self-efficacy has significant positive correlation of
(r=.56, p<0.5) with selected employee’s psychological wellbeing. Thus, the hypothesis is
accepted. This suggests that employees who report high self-efficacy experience healthy
psychological wellbeing.

H2: Exogenous variables will have a significant joint and independent influence on
psychological well-being among employees in the selected organisations in Lagos.
This hypothesis was tested using multiple regression analysis. Results are presented in Table 2.
Table 2: Summary of multiple regression showing joint and independent influence of exogenous variables on
psychological wellbeing.
Predictors R2 F Sig Β T Sig.
Self-Esteem -.244 -4.981 .000
Self-Efficacy .187 4.329 .000
Emotional Intelligence .486 96.444 .000 .035 .765 .445
Depression -.021 -.635 .526
Organizational Frustration -.344 -7.840 .000
DV: Psychological Wellbeing Scale

Table 2 shows result of multiple linear regression which indicated that three exogenous variables
of selected employees contributed significantly to the observed variance in their psychological
well-being. Specifically, self-efficacy contributed 18.7% of the observed variance in selected
employee’s psychological well-being (Beta=.187; t=4.329 at p< 0.05). But, self-esteem and
organisational frustration have an inverse relationship with selected employee’s psychological
well-being. However, selected employees values of exogenous variables indicated significant
R2=0.486 (F-ratio=96.444 at p<0.05), which implies that employees exogenous variables
accounted for about 48.6% of the total variance observed in selected employees psychological
well-being.

DISCUSSION
The study assessed the responses of five hundred and fifteen employees across First bank,
Access bank, Sterling bank, 7up bottling company, Chi Limited, Nigerian bottling company,
9mobile, Airtel, and MTN under Ikeja Local government area of Lagos state.

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Hypothesis 1, which states that, self-efficacy will emerge as significant correlate of psychological
wellbeing among employees in the selected organisations in Lagos, was accepted. This study
found self-efficacy to be significantly and positively related to selected employee’s psychological
wellbeing. In support of the present study, Salimirad and Srimathi (2016) who studied the
relationship between, psychological wellbeing and occupational self-efficacy among teachers in
the city of Mysore, India; found that self-efficacy and psychological wellbeing are positively
related.

Hypothesis 2, which states that exogenous variables will have a significant joint and independent
influence on psychological wellbeing among employees in the selected organisations in Lagos,
was accepted. This study found self-esteem, self-efficacy, emotional intelligence, depression and
organisational frustration to have joint influence on psychological wellbeing of selected
employees. The study also revealed that self-esteem, self-efficacy and organisational frustration
were significant predictors of psychological wellbeing among employees in selected
organisations.
The finding of the present study is in agreement with Mabekoje (2003) who assessed which linear
combination of extraversion, agreeableness, self-esteem, self-efficacy, and social support best
discriminates psychological well-being among Nigerian teachers. He found self-esteem as the
only single discrimination of teachers’ psychological well-being. The finding of this study is also
supported by Awan and Sitwat (2014) who explored the relationship between workplace
spirituality, self-esteem and psychological wellbeing among mental health professionals. They
revealed that self-esteem was the only significant predictor of psychological wellbeing.

Conclusion
This study investigated self-efficacy as predictor of psychological well-being among employees
of selected organisations in Lagos. In this regard, it demonstrated the relationship between self-
efficacy and employee’s psychological wellbeing. As an attempt to explore the gap in knowledge,
the study in most part did corroborate the result of body of research in this area while
strengthening the knowledge on psychological wellbeing and self-efficacy.
This study has found exogenous variable of self-efficacy to be positively related to employee’s
psychological wellbeing. Employees, who reported high self-efficacy experienced healthy
psychological well-being. The present study found exogenous variables of self-esteem, self-
efficacy, emotional intelligence, depression and organisational frustration to have joint influence
on psychological well-being of employees. The study also found self- esteem, self-efficacy and
organisational frustration as predictors of psychological well-being among employees.

Recommendations
In view of the findings of this study, it is therefore suggested that management in the
telecommunications, financial and manufacturing sector of the economy should pay adequate
attention to the salient psychological factor of self-efficacy of employees and ensure that they are
well trained on prerequisite skills and sensitized on the necessity of putting on self confidence in
handling work-life situations as this significantly affect their psychological well-being. This as a
management approach would enable the employees to be fully composed and comport
themselves for their work duties and assignments.

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