Background: Sources of self-efficacy may play a relevant motivational role in the swimming learning process. A scale for sources for self-efficacy for physical activity has shown validity and reliability evidence. However, this scale has not been neither translated into Spanish nor adapted for swimming. Aim: To examine validity and reliability of a Spanish version of a scale for sources of self-efficacy adapted to swimming. Methods: The original Sources of Self-efficacy for Physical Activity scale, by Warner et al. (2014), focused on physical activity, was back translated (German-Spanish-German, and a bilingual committee assessed the Spanish translation quality and made corrections in the Spanish version) and adapted to swimming, by replacing physical activity terms with swimming terms. The scale consists of 18 items and six dimensions (one for each source. E. g.: mastery experience). It was applied to a sample of university students in swimming lessons for beginners (N = 233, mean age = 20.26 y. o. (SD = 5.13), 49% women, 46.4% had never been in swimming lessons while 53.6% have had at least swimming lessons for a few days). Confirmatory Factor Analysis was conducted, as well as correlations with other measures. Reliability was also estimated. Results: A six-factor structure for the sources of self-efficacy for swimming fit the data well (*2 = 1.91, CFI = .96, RMSEA = .063). Factor loadings were all between * = .66 and * = .96 and reliability for subscales were all between * = .74 and * = .92. As evidence of construct validity, the subscales of the scale focus on sources of self-efficacy for swimming correlated positively with the corresponding subscales of the scale on sources of self-efficacy for physical activity (rs between .28 and .64, ps < .001). Most subscales also correlated with self-reported aquatic skills (at least p < .01). Only the association with positive affect was statistically not significative (p = .07).
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