Exploring a relationship between students’ interpreting self-efficacy and performance: triangulating data on interpreter performance assessment

ABSTRACT

Interpreting Self-Efficacy (ISE) is the belief one holds about their own interpreting capabilities. One of the first instruments to measure this self-belief is S.-B. Lee’s ISE scale, a statistically sound self-report questionnaire designed to measure the ISE levels of undergraduate students majoring in consecutive interpreting (Cronbach’s α = .896). In theory, this scale helps to predict how successful a student will be in an interpreting task. The present study aims to show whether there is a strong correlation between ISE and actual performance among undergraduate students. For this purpose, the study was conducted in three steps. First, the ISE scale was administered to 33 undergraduate students enrolled in an advanced course on consecutive interpreting, in order to measure the students’ ISE levels. Second, the students’ interpreting performances were assessed on multiple occasions, using triangulation involving three different assessor groups, namely the classroom teacher, peer students, and external raters. Third, statistical analysis was performed to find out whether there is a relationship (and what kind of relationship exists) between the students’ ISE and performance levels. Findings from this study and their implications for interpreter training are also discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Rating
• triangulation
• teacher assessment
• peer assessment
• independent assessment

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The self-report questionnaire was built and used on the assumption that ‘subjects have access to the psychological property that the researcher wishes to measure and that subjects are willing to report that property’ (Judd and McClelland, n.d., 53).

2. Denzin (1970) distinguishes four types of triangulation: data triangulation, methodological triangulation, investigator triangulation, and theoretical triangulation.

3. In this summary report, the student could obtain various statistics (e.g. mean, median, standard deviation, and maximum score) by assessment category.

4. Assessment includes test as its subset. Assessment starts with teaching, and a student’s answer to a simple question may be subject to assessment (Brown and Abeywickrama, 2010, 3–6).

5. EBS English (http://www.ebse.co.kr) is an educational website that provides a wide array of audio-visual materials for English learners in Korea.

6. In this study, data were normally distributed. The skew (or kurtosis) statistic divided by its standard error was within ±2, indicating that the degree of skew (kurtosis) is acceptable. A correlation of 0.7 to 0.9 is ‘strong’, 0.4 to 0.6 ‘moderate’, and 0.1 to 0.3 ‘weak’ (Dancey and Reidy, 2007).

7. Statistically speaking, outliers are data points that fall outside ± 3 standard deviations from the mean of either variable (Bachman, 2004, 101).

8. Faculty members were allowed to check their students’ academic records for educational purposes on the condition that confidentiality would be guaranteed.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Hankuk University of Foreign Studies Research Fund.