Self-efficacy in weight management.

Matthew M. Clark, David B. Abrams, RAYMOND S. NIAURA, Cheryl A. Eaton, Joseph S. Rossi·1991·Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology
DOI 10.1037//0022-006x.59.5.739

Abstract

Self-efficacy is an important mediating mechanism in advancing understanding of the treatment of obesity. This study developed and validated the Weight Efficacy Life-Style Questionnaire (WEL), improving on previous studies by the use of clinical populations, cross-validation of the initial factor analysis, exploration of the best fitting theoretical model of self-efficacy, and examination of change in treatment. The resulting 20-item WEL consists of five situational factors: Negative Emotions, Availability, Social Pressure, Physical Discomfort, and Positive Activities. A hierarchical model was found to provide the best fit to the data. Results from two separate clinical treatment studies (total N = 382) show that the WEL is sensitive to changes in global scores as well as to a subset of the five situational factor scores. Treatment programs may be incomplete if they change only a subset of the situational dimensions of self-efficacy. Theoretical and clinical implications are discussed.

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Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.

This page
CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Self-efficacy in weight management. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1037//0022-006x.59.5.739
The paper
Clark, M. M., Abrams, D. B., NIAURA, R. S., Eaton, C. A., & Rossi, J. S. (1991). Self-efficacy in weight management. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1037//0022-006x.59.5.739

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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.