Two of the most widely used academic self-efficacy assessment techniques, problem-referenced measurement and the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) were compared. Participants were 383 high school students from 4 Los Angeles (California) schools. Multi-trait multi-method analyses revealed that the two techniques were not measuring exactly the same thing. In particular, students' responses became more uniform in each school subject as the assessment procedures referred to more global events than specific problems. The two techniques also differed in generality. The relationship between students' verbal and mathematics self-efficacy perceptions was noticeably stronger with the problem-referenced technique than with the MSLQ. (Contains one table, three figures, and six references.) (Author/SLD)