Assessment of perceived competence in aquatic education: Aspects of reliability and validity of the Perceived Swimming Competence Assessment Scale

The objective of this study was to examine the psychometric properties of a new scale, Perceived Swimming Competence Assessment Scale (PSCAS), designed to assess perceived swimming competence in children. The scale is aligned with skills assessed in the Swimming Competence Assessment Scale (SCAS), is simple to administer, and applicable for large-group assessment. A total of 353 Norwegian-speaking children (girls: n = 181, boys: n = 172) with a mean (SD) age of 9.65 (0.31) years completed the scale consisting of seven items, enabling us to investigate its internal consistency, construct validity, and test–retest reliability. Results indicated that the children rated their perceived swimming competence primarily as high or very high and that boys rated their perceived competence higher compared to girls for five of the items. Correlational analysis indicated significant relationships between nearly all items and confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) supported a unidimensional model. The internal consistency reliability coefficient (Cronbach’s alpha) of this overall factor was 0.8, and test-retest reliability analysis indicated moderate-to-high ICCs for individual items and a relatively high ICC for the overall score (r = 0.91). Overall, it is concluded that the PSCAS has acceptable psychometric properties for confident use in assessing perceived swimming competence among 9- to 10-year-old children.