The shortened Spanish version of the Personal Report of Confidence as Speaker: Reliability and validity in adolescent population

The main aim of this research was analyzing the psychometric properties of the shortened version of Spanish adaptation of the “Cuestionario de Confianza para Hablar en Público” (Personal Report of Confidence as Speaker, PRCS; Paul, 1966) to a sample of 788 adolescents between the ages of 12 and 17. The confirmatory factorial analysis corroborated two factors: Security/Enjoy for Public Speaking and Fear to Public Speaking. Both the internal consistency (alpha= 0.84) and test-retest reliability (r= 0.81) were high. The correlations with the Cuestionario de Evaluación de Dificultades Interpersonales en la Adolescencia (CEDIA; Inglés, Méndez e Hidalgo, 2000) (r= 0.43) and the “Inventario de Ansiedad y Fobia Social” (Social Phobia and Anxiety Inventory, SPAI; Turner, Beidel, Dancy & Stanley, 1989) (r= 0.53) were stadistically significant (p < 0.001). The lack of confidence towards public speaking correlated positively with the Neuroticism scale and negatively with the Extraversion scale of the “Cuestionario de Personalidad de Eysenck” (Eysenck Personality Questionnaire, EPQ; TEA, 1986). Females reported less confidence in public speaking, which decreased with age.