Peers, knowledge, and experience : influences on frame of reference biases with self-efficacy of contraceptive self-control and teenage pregnancy

Adolescents’ feelings of self-efficacy regarding contraceptive use may be an important contributor to actual contraception use, and, consequentially, the avoidance of undesirable outcomes such as teen pregnancy. However, the meaning of self-assessments of contraceptive self-efficacy—and thus its ability to predict improved outcomes—may be substantially influenced by the context of one’s school peers. Norming responses to the self-efficacy views held by one’s school peers may produce frame of reference biases, lowering average responses in higher average self-efficacy schools. This may obscure or inverting school-level relationships between self-efficacy and teen pregnancy. Additionally, personal and contextual factors may influence the predictive validity of contraceptive self-efficacy, in particular, prior sexual experience and effective contraceptive knowledge. Using a sample of n = 5247 female students from the Add Health database who have contraceptive self-efficacy and longitudinal pregnancy data, we show that student-level self-efficacy predicts reduced teenage pregnancy, but only among individuals with prior sexual experience. School-level variance in contraceptive self-efficacy was minimal, and did not predict school-average teen pregnancy, providing some support for the frame of reference bias account. Additionally, an interaction was observed between school-level self-efficacy and school-level knowledge of proper contraceptive use, suggesting that self-views regarding contraception may also depend on the likelihood that one and one’s partner will use contraception correctly