Recent research demonstrates that female middle school aged youth experience lower self-efficacy than their male counterparts (West et al., 2020). Therefore, self-efficacy may specifically be a useful area for intervention with this population. This poster explores findings from a qualitative study exploring 12 female Miami-Dade County middle school aged youths’ phenomenological experiences with self-efficacy. Specifically, youth shared their perspectives on personal experiences with self-efficacy while engaged in a school-based socioemotional learning intervention. Transcribed qualitative data included student written responses to 13 open-ended questions regarding their respective beliefs of their self-efficacy. Strauss and Corbin’s constant-comparative multi-level approach to coding (1997) was utilized to analyze data from the focus group interviews. Open and axial coding methodology was utilized to analyze qualitative data and develop themes. While data analysis is still being conducted, the following themes have emerged from preliminary data analysis that reflect the youth’s experience with self-efficacy: (a) overall, youth shared they felt interested in learning about self-efficacy, (b) youth identified performance in the areas of physical fitness, extracurricular activities, and academics as areas in which they would like to improve their self-efficacy, (c) participants overwhelmingly identified gender-based stereotypes as influential over their current experiences with self-efficacy, and (d) youth indicated that the presence of role models is conducive to their self-efficacy. These themes and implications for the incorporation of self-efficacy development in future SEL programming, and study limitations will be reviewed in greater depth.