Why Efficacy?

Funny question, really! My research goal when I originally started my doctoral journey was to explore sorority recruitment - benefits, misconceptions, positive and negatives experiences of sorority women. At the time my experience with sorority chapters that didn’t always have the best recruitment outcomes was concerning. Most of the time I would see individual women and chapters really look down on themselves because they didn’t match to quota or women didn’t sign with them on Bid Day.

There was a psychological effect on women that was purely negative and led to feelings of inadequacy and lowered self confidence. Women were feeling like they didn’t matter and they weren’t a viable option for potential members on their campus…and they didn’t know why!

When I first started diving into the effects of formal Panhellenic recruitment, I found that individual women were saying the same thing. They all expressed feeling like something was wrong or different about them or their chapter. They were the outlier on their campus. The lack of confidence they were explaining was interesting to me and as I continued to research the concept of efficacy was right there on my computer screen.

Efficacy is different than confidence. Confidence is the belief in oneself.

Efficacy is the belief that one can produce a desired or intended result. What I was hearing from women was that they lacked confidence in themselves throughout the formal recruitment process based on past recruitment numbers, which led their self-efficacy to decrease because they never felt as though they were going to be able to meet quota.

So here I was promoting the benefits of sorority and lifelong sisterhood, while women didn’t even believe that about themselves. I often felt like I was lying to women about what their experiences could look like! I started talking with more sorority women, National organization staff members and volunteers, and fraternity/sorority advisors. Many shared they had similar experiences with sorority women. We were also hearing from strong recruiting chapters that they felt as though they didn’t always want to release a certain amount of women who they were interested in. What I found was that sorority women had A LOT to say about the use of the Release Figure Method during a formalized Panhellenic recruitment period.

This is where my research journey began! I was excited and nervous that I had found my topic. More to come in my next blog post!