Identifying the level of self-efficacy of parents' who have children with multiple disabilities in accordance with different factors.

Multiple disabilities can be defined as a combination of various disabilities that pose a problem per se. Parental self-efficacy is potentially an important cognitive structure for child and parent correlation, and it can be widely described as a childminder's expectations to be able to parent successfully. Once a parent's child is diagnosed with a disability, any experience can somehow have an effect on their psyche. A parent's self-efficacy, in this sense, may be considered an influential factor to their decisions they make on their children. The aim of this study is to look into the self-efficacy levels of parents with children who suffer from multiple disabilities and compare them depending on variable reasons. The participants of this descriptive research involves 136 mothers and 95 fathers. A personal information form was employed to obtain demographic data of children and their parents and a Turkish language version of Parental Self-Efficacy Scale (EÖYÖ-TV) was used to evaluate parents' self-efficacy. The results of the analysis demonstrated differences depending on the child's gender and level of disability whereas the parent's gender, education level, the number of working parents or whether the parents receive some sort of benefits did not have any influence on parents' self-efficacy points. Also, the higher the parents' self-efficacy points were, the lower the number of children and their age. There is no supporting evidence for these findings in literature, though. No correlation was found between the self-efficacy points of parents who have children with multiple disabilities and the diagnosis age, monthly income and duration of the child's education span. This research stands out in that it is the first one to study the self-efficacy of parents who have children with multiple disabilities as well as the fact that the participants of the research diversified.