This study was conducted to identify the characteristics of pain, self-esteem, perceived health status, and self-efficacy and its influencing factors in patients with chronic arthritis. The data were obtained from 104 patients with chronic arthritis registered in one university hospital in Seoul, from May to August, 2000. For analysing the data, SAS program was used for t-test, ANOVA, Scheffe test, Pearson correlation, and stepwise multiple regression. The results were as follows: 1. The variables which showed significant difference with pain were sex, number of painful joints. 2. The variables which showed significant difference with perceived health status were age, diagnosis. number of painful joints. 3. The variables which showed significant difference with self-efficacy were duration of disease, number of painful joints. quality of sleeping. 4. Moderate negative correlation were observed between pain and perceived health status, self-efficacy, and low positive correlation was observed between self-esteem and perceived health status. Also self-esteem revealed moderate positive correlation with self-efficacy, and moderate positive correlation was observed perceived health status and self-efficacy. 5. The predictors to explain self-efficacy were number of painful joints, self-esteem, duration of disease, duration of exercise and pain. These predictors explained $36.05\%$ of variance of self-efficacy. In conclusion, the nursing intervention to improve self-efficacy for chronic arthritis patients focused not only physiological symptoms such as pain. but also psychosocial factors such as self-esteem.