Courage as a social-cognitive process: Development of a courage efficacy scale.

Although the concept of courage is prevalent in common thought and language, existing courage measures do not adequately assess person factors (e.g., self-efficacy) that facilitate courageous behaviors. The Courage Efficacy Scale (CES) was developed based on Bandura's Social Cognitive Theory, framing courage as a function of antecedent person factors (i.e., self-efficacy, perseverance, and resilience). The CES was validated across three independent samples. Multigroup CFA demonstrated equivalence of the covariance matrices (CFI = 0.99, RMSEA = 0.049). Configural invariance held, and metric invariance (assessed by constraining factor loadings, with factor correlations additionally constrained) was also supported across the three samples. Evidence of construct validity is noted through correlations with existing courage measures and other validation measures. Implications of the new scale are discussed.