Self-Perceived Communication Competence Scale (SPCC)

1. Abstract

The Self-Perceived Communication Competence Scale (SPCC), developed by James C. McCroskey and Linda L. McCroskey in 1988, is an internationally recognized psychometric instrument designed to assess an individual’s subjective evaluation of their own communication competence across varied interpersonal contexts and receiver types. Comprising 12 items, the SPCC operationalizes communication competence through a dual-faceted, balanced factorial design crossing four distinct communication contexts (public speaking, large meetings, small groups, and dyads) with three distinct categories of relational receivers (strangers, acquaintances, and friends). Respondents self-evaluate their communicative ability using a continuous percentage metric ranging from 0 (completely incompetent) to 100 (competent). Psychometrically, the instrument exhibits robust internal consistency, yielding an overall scale reliability coefficient of Cronbach’s α = .92, with receiver subscales demonstrating alphas from .78 to .87, and context subscales ranging from .44 to .72. The scale has demonstrated strong convergent validity through predictable inverse correlations with communication apprehension as measured by the Personal Report of Communication Apprehension (PRCA-24) and positive associations with the Willingness to Communicate (WTC) construct. It remains widely deployed across instructional communication, organizational diagnostics, clinical assessments of social anxiety, and cross-cultural communication research. This article provides a comprehensive psychometric review of the SPCC, evaluating its theoretical underpinnings, measurement model, structural validity, reliability, scoring methodology, and normative research applications.

2. Keywords

Self-Perceived Communication Competence, SPCC, James C. McCroskey, Communication Competence, Communication Apprehension, Interpersonal Communication, Public Speaking Competence, Self-Efficacy, Psychometrics, Factor Structure

3. Authors

The scale was developed and validated by two prominent scholars in communication studies and behavioral psychology:

• James C. McCroskey, Ed.D. (1934–2012): Formerly Professor Emeritus of Communication Studies at West Virginia University and University of Alabama at Birmingham. Renowned internationally as a foundational scholar in instructional communication, communication apprehension, and communicative traits.
• Linda L. McCroskey, Ph.D.: Professor Emerita of Communication Studies at California State University, Long Beach. Renowned for her contributions to organizational communication, instructional communication, and measurement methodology.

Inquiries regarding archival research and historical instruments are maintained via the institutional repository of the Department of Communication Studies at West Virginia University and the digital archives dedicated to James C. McCroskey’s instructional measurement tools.

4. Purpose

The Self-Perceived Communication Competence Scale was designed to address a critical theoretical and methodological dilemma in communication studies: the divergence between objective communicative performance and subjective self-assessment. While objective assessments often rely on third-party behavioral coding, such approaches routinely fail to explain an individual’s autonomous communicative choices, such as initiation, avoidance, or conversational engagement. McCroskey and McCroskey (1988) argued that human communicative behavior is largely governed by how individuals perceive their own abilities, rather than how external observers score them. If a person views themselves as incompetent in a given communicative setting, their subsequent behavior—marked by social withdrawal, conversational reticence, or heightened anxiety—will mirror that self-concept, regardless of objective skill.

The primary purpose of the SPCC is to evaluate an individual’s self-efficacy and perceived competence across twelve distinct ecological scenarios, systematically manipulating context size and relational familiarity. In educational settings, the SPCC is widely employed as a diagnostic screening tool to identify students experiencing communication reticence, facilitating targeted pedagogical interventions in public speaking and interpersonal communication courses. In organizational and corporate development, the instrument serves to assess employee leadership readiness, cross-functional collaboration, and communicative adaptability within formal meetings and client-facing presentations.

Clinically, the SPCC provides valuable baseline data for cognitive-behavioral therapies (CBT) addressing social anxiety disorder and severe communication apprehension. By distinguishing between communicative contexts (e.g., dyad versus public speaking) and interlocutor types (e.g., strangers versus friends), clinicians can isolate the specific contextual parameters that trigger cognitive distortions of inadequacy. The scale acts as an essential diagnostic counterweight to affective measures such as the PRCA-24 and behavioral intention inventories such as the Willingness to Communicate (WTC) scale.

5. Psychological Construct

The psychological construct assessed by the SPCC is self-perceived communication competence, defined as a cognitive self-evaluation of one’s adequacy, effectiveness, and adaptability when engaging in symbolic human interaction. Competence in communication theory traditionally integrates two overarching components: effectiveness (the achievement of preferred outcomes) and appropriateness (the maintenance of situational and relational norms). Within the SPCC, self-perceptions of this capacity are operationalized across a 4 × 3 orthogonal taxonomy:

Contextual Dimensions

• Public Speaking Competence: The subjective assessment of one’s ability to deliver a formal, one-to-many monologue or presentation to an audience (evaluated across Items 1, 8, and 12). This represents the most cognitively demanding context characterized by unidirectional message transmission, high evaluation threat, and formal speech planning.
• Meeting Competence: The perceived capacity to participate effectively in medium-to-large structured gatherings (e.g., organizational or professional meetings, evaluated across Items 3, 6, and 10). This involves procedural comprehension, turn-taking in formal social environments, and multiparty negotiation.
• Small Group Competence: The self-appraisal of communicative functioning within informal or task-oriented collaborative groups of approximately 3 to 7 participants (evaluated across Items 4, 9, and 11). This dimension focuses on interactive dialogue, collaborative problem-solving, and conversational spontaneity.
• Dyadic Competence: The self-rated skill in one-on-one interpersonal exchanges (evaluated across Items 2, 5, and 7). This setting relies heavily on relational responsiveness, active listening, nonverbal immediacy, and personal disclosure.

Receiver Dimensions

• Stranger Competence: The self-assessed capability to communicate with unacquainted persons (evaluated across Items 1, 4, 7, and 10). Interacting with strangers entails elevated psychological risk, uncertainty management, and absence of prior shared relational history.
• Acquaintance Competence: The subjective efficacy in conversing with moderately familiar interlocutors (evaluated across Items 2, 6, 9, and 12). This represents an intermediate interpersonal tier where social predictability is moderate but distinct from intimate relational trust.
• Friend Competence: The perceived capacity to communicate with close, trusted individuals (evaluated across Items 3, 5, 8, and 11). Interactions in this domain feature high psychological safety, low relational risk, and established conversational scripts.

6. Theoretical Framework

The SPCC is grounded in the convergence of cognitive social learning theory and communication trait theory. Most prominently, it operationalizes Albert Bandura’s (1977, 1997) construct of perceived self-efficacy within human communication. According to Bandura, self-efficacy refers to beliefs in one’s capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to produce given attainments. In the realm of communication, self-efficacy does not merely correlate with actual ability; it directly dictates the initiation of speech, the amount of effort expended, and resilience when encountering communicative failure.

McCroskey and McCroskey (1988) integrated this Bandurian principle with foundational communication theory developed by scholars such as Brian Spitzberg and William Cupach (1984), who conceptualized communication competence as a triadic nexus of knowledge, skill, and motivation. McCroskey and McCroskey argued that traditional behavioral measures failed to predict communication choice precisely because individuals act on their internal perceptions rather than objective realities. An individual who possesses flawless syntactical and behavioral skills will nevertheless exhibit avoidance behavior if their self-efficacy beliefs are deficient.

Furthermore, the SPCC forms an essential pillar of McCroskey’s larger cognitive-behavioral model of communication avoidance, which integrates three core constructs:

1. Affective: Communication Apprehension (operationalized by the PRCA-24).
2. Cognitive: Self-Perceived Communication Competence (operationalized by the SPCC).
3. Behavioral Predisposition: Willingness to Communicate (operationalized by the WTC scale).

Within this theoretical model, Communication Apprehension and Self-Perceived Communication Competence operate as bidirectional antecedents of an individual’s Willingness to Communicate. High communication apprehension degrades perceived competence, while low self-perceived competence conversely elevates situational anxiety. Together, these cognitive and affective mechanisms determine whether an individual enters or avoids communicative encounters.

7. Validity

Extensive psychometric investigations have established the construct, convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity of the SPCC across diverse adult, collegiate, and cross-cultural populations.

Construct and Convergent Validity

In the seminal validation study, McCroskey and McCroskey (1988) reported strong convergent correlations between the SPCC and related communication traits. The SPCC demonstrated a substantial, statistically significant negative correlation with trait-level communication apprehension (PRCA-24), with Pearson correlation coefficients typically ranging between r = -.55 and r = -.65 (p < .001). This confirms that heightened communication apprehension is systematically linked with diminished self-perceptions of competence.

Furthermore, when evaluated against the Willingness to Communicate (WTC) scale, the SPCC demonstrated strong positive correlations ranging between r = .50 and r = .65. Regression analyses demonstrated that SPCC scores, alongside PRCA-24 scores, account for substantial variance (frequently exceeding 40%) in individuals’ reported willingness to engage in interaction across public, meeting, group, and dyadic settings.

Discriminant Validity

Discriminant validity has been demonstrated through investigations evaluating the independence of the SPCC from general cognitive intelligence (IQ), scholastic achievement, and social desirability bias. Correlations between SPCC scores and standardized scholastic achievement metrics (e.g., ACT, SAT) or objective cognitive ability tests consistently hover near zero (r < .10, non-significant). This confirms that the SPCC does not capture general academic intelligence, but rather specific communicative self-efficacy. In addition, when compared against objective ratings of behavioral competence provided by trained observers, correlations remain moderate (typically r = .20 to .35), confirming McCroskey and McCroskey’s original theoretical assertion that subjective self-perceptions represent an independent psychological construct distinct from external observer evaluations.

Cross-Cultural and Criterion-Related Validity

Criterion-related validity has been documented in organizational and academic performance. Research by Sallinen-Kuparinen, McCroskey, and Richmond (1991) across international samples (e.g., Finnish, American, and Asian cohorts) demonstrated that the SPCC successfully predicts behavioral participation in classrooms, leadership assumption in small groups, and occupational interview performance.

8. Reliability

The SPCC possesses high internal consistency, as evidenced across numerous psychometric investigations over the past three decades. In the original validation paper by McCroskey and McCroskey (1988), the scale demonstrated the following internal consistency values (Cronbach’s α):

• Total SPCC Composite: α = .92
• Stranger Subscale: α = .87
• Acquaintance Subscale: α = .84
• Friend Subscale: α = .78
• Public Speaking Subscale: α = .72
• Large Meeting Subscale: α = .68
• Small Group Subscale: α = .67
• Dyad Subscale: α = .44

The relatively modest alpha coefficient observed for the Dyad subscale (α = .44) in the original validation study has been extensively addressed in psychometric literature. Because the Dyad subscale consists of only three items that span three radically divergent receiver types (Item 2: acquaintance, Item 5: friend, Item 7: stranger), the inter-item variance reflects the substantial behavioral divergence between speaking to a close confidant versus a complete stranger in a dyad. When items are grouped along receiver lines (e.g., Stranger, Acquaintance, Friend), the subscales demonstrate higher internal consistency (α ≥ .78 to .87), indicating that receiver familiarity accounts for greater systematic variance than context size in one-on-one encounters.

Subsequent studies have confirmed the temporal stability of the SPCC. Test-retest reliability evaluations over intervals ranging from two to six weeks have yielded stability coefficients exceeding r = .80 (ranging from .81 to .86), confirming that while self-perceived competence is responsive to prolonged training and clinical interventions, it behaves as a stable trait-like disposition under static conditions.

9. Factor Analysis

Structural evaluations of the SPCC via exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) reveal a multi-faceted cognitive schema. Because the 12 items were constructed using a completely balanced cross-factorial design (4 contexts × 3 receivers), exploratory factor analyses frequently yield two distinct, competing factor solutions depending on extraction methods and sample composition:

Context-Driven Factor Structure

When rotated using oblique (Promax/Oblimin) or orthogonal (Varimax) procedures, EFA models frequently extract four primary factors aligned with the four communication settings: Public Speaking (Items 1, 8, 12), Meetings (Items 3, 6, 10), Small Groups (Items 4, 9, 11), and Dyads (Items 2, 5, 7). Item factor loadings on their primary target context typically exceed .60, with minimal secondary cross-loadings, demonstrating distinct psychological boundaries between solitary public address and collaborative small group or dyadic communication.

Receiver-Driven Factor Structure

Conversely, alternative EFA models extract three primary factors structured strictly by receiver familiarity: Stranger (Items 1, 4, 7, 10), Acquaintance (Items 2, 6, 9, 12), and Friend (Items 3, 5, 8, 11). Receiver-oriented factor structures often account for higher cumulative variance than context models, supporting the conclusion that relationship familiarity serves as a dominant heuristic in communicative self-assessment.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis and Higher-Order Models

Confirmatory factor analytic investigations (e.g., Chesebro, 2003) have tested hierarchical and bifactor models to resolve this dual-facet structure. A higher-order model comprising a general factor (“Global Self-Perceived Communication Competence”) subsuming either the four context factors or the three receiver factors consistently achieves acceptable goodness-of-fit indices:

• Comparative Fit Index (CFI) > .93
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI) > .91
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) < .065
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR) < .050

These findings substantiate the psychometric legitimacy of reporting both the global SPCC composite score and the specific context and receiver subscores.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Instrument Name: Self-Perceived Communication Competence Scale (SPCC)
• Authors: James C. McCroskey and Linda L. McCroskey (1988)
• Measurement Format: Paper-and-pencil questionnaire or computerized self-report inventory
• Item Count: 12 behavioral scenarios
• Administration Time: Approximately 3 to 5 minutes
• Response Metric: Continuous percentage scale ranging from 0 to 100, where 0 = completely incompetent and 100 = completely competent
• Target Population: Adolescents, college students, and adult populations
• Scoring Guidelines:
  • Context Subscale Calculations:
    • Public Speaking: (Item 1 + Item 8 + Item 12) ÷ 3
    • Large Meeting: (Item 3 + Item 6 + Item 10) ÷ 3
    • Small Group: (Item 4 + Item 9 + Item 11) ÷ 3
    • Dyad: (Item 2 + Item 5 + Item 7) ÷ 3
  • Receiver Subscale Calculations:
    • Stranger: (Item 1 + Item 4 + Item 7 + Item 10) ÷ 4
    • Acquaintance: (Item 2 + Item 6 + Item 9 + Item 12) ÷ 4
    • Friend: (Item 3 + Item 5 + Item 8 + Item 11) ÷ 4
  • Total SPCC Composite Score: (Stranger Subscore + Acquaintance Subscore + Friend Subscore) ÷ 3 [Alternatively calculated as the sum of all 12 items ÷ 12].
• Score Interpretations:
  • Total Score: > 82 indicates High Self-Perceived Competence; 59–82 indicates Moderate Competence; < 59 indicates Low Self-Perceived Competence.
  • Public Speaking: > 68 High; < 51 Low.
  • Meeting: > 85 High; < 68 Low.
  • Group: > 89 High; < 77 Low.
  • Dyad: > 93 High; < 83 Low.
  • Stranger: > 71 High; < 53 Low.
  • Acquaintance: > 84 High; < 68 Low.
  • Friend: > 92 High; < 82 Low.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Self-Perceived Communication Competence Scale was originally published in 1988 in Communication Research Reports by Dr. James C. McCroskey and Dr. Linda L. McCroskey. In accordance with the longstanding academic philosophy of Dr. James C. McCroskey, the instrument is placed in the public domain for instructional, clinical, and non-commercial academic research purposes.

Fee Structure: There are no licensing fees, royalties, or permission costs required for using the scale in educational research, master’s theses, doctoral dissertations, or non-profit clinical assessments. Commercial use, inclusion in proprietary software platforms, or integration within fee-for-service consulting programs requires appropriate scholarly attribution and compliance with standard fair-use copyright law. Scholarly citations to the original 1988 validation article are required in all published work utilizing the tool.

12. References

• Bandura, A. (1977). Self-efficacy: Toward a unifying theory of behavioral change. Psychological Review, 84(2), 191–215. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.84.2.191
• Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. W. H. Freeman and Company.
• Chesebro, J. W. (2003). Effects of teacher nonverbal immediacy and credibility on student motivation, affective learning, and cognitive learning. Communication Education, 52(2), 119–134. https://doi.org/10.1080/03634520302469
• McCroskey, J. C. (1982). An introduction to rhetorical communication (4th ed.). Prentice-Hall.
• McCroskey, J. C., & McCroskey, L. L. (1988). Self-report as an approach to measuring communication competence. Communication Research Reports, 5(2), 108–113. https://doi.org/10.1080/08824098809359810
• Richmond, V. P., McCroskey, J. C., & McCroskey, L. L. (1989). An investigation of self-perceived communication competence and personality. Communication Research Reports, 6(1), 28–36. https://doi.org/10.1080/08824098909359830
• Sallinen-Kuparinen, A., McCroskey, J. C., & Richmond, V. P. (1991). Willingness to communicate, communication apprehension, and self-perceived communication competence: A cross-cultural comparison. Communication Research Reports, 8(1), 55–64. https://doi.org/10.1080/08824099109359875
• Spitzberg, B. H., & Cupach, W. R. (1984). Interpersonal communication competence. SAGE Publications.

13. Items of the Scale