Development of a cultural self-efficacy scale for adolescents (CSES-A) § Elena Briones a, *, Carmen Tabernero b , Carlo Tramontano c , Gian Vittorio Caprara c , Alicia Arenas d a Department of Personality, University of Salamanca, Avenida La Merced, 109-131. 37005 Salamanca, Spain b Department of Education, University of Cordoba, Cordoba, Spain c Department of Psychology, University of Rome ‘‘La Sapienza’’, Rome, Italy d Department of Basic Psychology, University of Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain 1. Introduction Immigration is a world-wide phenomenon. In the past few years, Spain has become the most multiethnic country in the European Union (OCDE, 2006), even though immigration is a relatively new phenomenon in this country. The Ministry of Education and Science showed that immigrant students represent 8.44% of the total of non-university students (MEC, 2007). Compulsory Secondary Education in Spain is characterized by the highest level of growth in the enrolment of foreign students in the last 10 years. International Journal of Intercultural Relations 33 (2009) 301–312 ARTICLE INFO Article history: Accepted 20 March 2009 Keywords: Cultural self-efficacy Adolescents Cultural diversity Cultural settings ABSTRACT We developed a cultural self-efficacy scale for adolescents (CSES-A) and tested its psychometric properties using both exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. Cultural self-efficacy (CSE) was defined as person’s perception of his/her own capability to function effectively in situations characterized by cultural diversity. On the basis of Bandura’s guideline for the development of a domain-specific self-efficacy measure, we tailored 50 items after reviewing literature about cultural competence, adolescents’ school-problems and social self-efficacy scales developed in previous studies in intercultural contexts. After pre-testing and analyzing psychometric properties of the scale, we selected 33 items. Eight hundred sixty-eight adolescents with five different cultural origins completed a set of questionnaires, including the CSES-A, internal control expectancies, general self-efficacy, academic expectancies, number of people from diverse cultures they keep in touch with, acculturation attitudes, perceived enrichment of other cultures, acculturation stress and demographic data. An EFA with MPLUS 2.14 highlighted a five-factor solution with 25 items that was supported by a subsequent CFA. The five factors were: self-efficacy in mixing satisfactorily with other cultures, in understanding different ways of life, in processing information from other cultures, in coping with loneliness and in learning and understanding other languages. The pattern of correlation with internal control expectancies, general self-efficacy and cultural variables supported the validity of the scale. CSES-A may be useful for future research on multicultural contexts, in which self- efficacy in cultural adaptation could be a fundamental variable. ß 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. § The research was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology under Grant BSO 2003–09222/PSCE and SEJ 2006–07741/PSCE. * Corresponding author. Tel.: +34 626 576193; fax: +34 923 29 46 07. E-mail addresses: briones@usal.es (E. Briones), edtaurm@uco.es (C. Tabernero), carlo.tramontano@uniroma1.it (C. Tramontano), gianvittorio.caprara@uniroma1.it (G.V. Caprara), arenas@usal.es (A. Arenas). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect International Journal of Intercultural Relations journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijintrel 0147-1767/$ – see front matter ß 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ijintrel.2009.03.006