Collective efficacy or team outcome confidence? Development and validation of the Observational Collective Efficacy Scale for Sports (OCESS)

Although collective efficacy has been demonstrated to be an important precursor of team performance, there remains some ambiguity concerning its assessment. Therefore, the main aim of the present study was to test the validity of previous collective efficacy measures. An online survey was completed by 4,451 Flemish players and coaches from nine different team sports. The results revealed two distinct and reliable scales; process-oriented collective efficacy (i.e., the confidence in the team’s skills to accomplish processes that could lead to successes) and outcome-oriented team confidence (i.e., the confidence in the team’s ability to obtain a goal or win a game). Furthermore, we established the validity of a 5-item Observational Collective Efficacy Scale for Sports (OCESS) as short measure of process-oriented collective efficacy. Because the OCESS only includes observable behaviors, this scale has the potential to be a starting point for the development of a continuous in-game measure of collective efficacy.