Converging with the implementation of the Bologna process at European universities, the European Higher Education Area states that writing and defending a Bachelor’s or Master’s thesis is the last step to earning a university degree (González & Wagenaar, 2006). A Master’s thesis is usually more complex and lengthier than a Bachelor’s thesis, but both have multiple aspects in common: they must be individual and original pieces of work written by last-year students, they must be written using academic language, they are supervised by at least one tutor, and they must be orally presented for examination. Through writing and defending their thesis, students must prove they have achieved a series of competencies related to their academic and intellectual development (Llaurado-Serra et al., 2018).

Writing a thesis and defending it via a public examination are two of the most complex and challenging tasks university students must complete during their studies (Fidalgo et al., 2019). Students tend to face their Bachelor’s or Master’s thesis with a lack of skills for academic writing and oral communication of scientific work (Becerra-Traver, 2017; Lloyd, 2007). This, in turn, leads them to perceive that their efficacy towards the completion of the thesis is low and fosters negative feelings, such as anxiety (Fidalgo et al., 2019). Self-efficacy is defined as one’s perception of how well s/he can conduct a specific task (Bandura, 1977). It is one of the most relevant concepts of Bandura’s theory of learning, and extant evidence shows a positive link between self-efficacy and academic achievement (Doménech-Betoret et al., 2017). Several tools have been developed to register self-efficacy towards various, rather specific, tasks in life such as the osteoporosis self-efficacy scale (Horan et al., 1999), the infertility self-efficacy scale (Cousineau et al., 2006), or the financial self-efficacy scale (Lown, 2011). Self-efficacy scales have also been developed in academic contexts like, for instance, the self-efficacy scale for disciplinary writing (Meza & Gónzalez, 2020) or the teachings’ sense of efficacy scale (Cocca & Cocca, 2022). However, to the best of our knowledge, there are no existing instruments to capture students’ perception of efficacy towards the two main tasks involved in developing a thesis: writing an academic text and defending it through a public oral examination. Our aim is to fill this gap in the literature.

Students often find a variety of difficulties throughout the process of writing and orally defending their thesis, including the correct use of writing guidelines (e.g., APA guidelines), the inclusion of relevant scientific literature in their own texts (Bhargava, 2015), and the adequate presentation of results through an oral examination (Chan, 2011). Literature shows that students who are working on their thesis frequently report feeling writing anxiety and this, in turn, negatively influences their academic performance (Huerta et al., 2016; Martinez et al., 2011). It has also been seen that more than 60% of university students report a fear of speaking in public (Dwyer & Davidson, 2012). These difficulties tend to cause delays in the development of students’ thesis and can even lead to the non-completion of their degrees (Nouri et al., 2019). As a result, there can be significant costs for universities, societies, and the students themselves, who can lose time, money, and energy, and experience a decrease in their wellbeing during the process (Sorrel et al., 2020).

Different studies, most of them conducted with PhD students, have focused on exploring the factors that can contribute to explaining students’ academic performance when facing their thesis. Some of these determinants are students’ previous performance in similar tasks (Nouri et al., 2019), students’ communication and language skills (Jiranek, 2010), students’ independence (Castro et al., 2011), the relation between the student and the tutor (Sorrel et al., 2020), and the supervisor’s experience and workload (Jiranek, 2010; Nouri et al., 2019). Of relevance to the current study, students’ self-efficacy is related to how well they perform in academic tasks (Callinan et al., 2018). As proposed by Bandura (1977), self-efficacy is a good predictor of a person’s performance on a task, especially when the perception of efficacy refers to that specific task at hand. In the context of completing a thesis, there are two areas in which self-efficacy can be considered: writing the thesis and its public oral defense.

The term “writing self-efficacy” is used to refer to the level of one’s confidence to write in a particular situation (Huerta et al., 2016). Writing self-efficacy is crucial for students who are writing their thesis, which is usually a self-scheduled, and highly demanding activity that requires a significant amount of effort (Callinan et al., 2018). It is one of the best predictors of successful academic writing (Bruning et al., 2013; Huerta et al., 2016; Pajares & Johnson 1996; White & Bruning, 2005), and perceiving oneself as able to write in an academic context contributes to decreasing writing anxiety (Huerta et al., 2016; Martinez et al., 2011). Consequently, different authors have pointed out the importance of promoting writing self-efficacy at a university level, especially when writing a thesis (Huerta et al., 2016). Self-efficacy seems equally important for the public oral defense of the thesis. Previous studies have shown that self-efficacy significantly impacts the student’s oral performance in academic contexts (e.g., Saimovna et al., 2019). It also influences students’ overall academic success and their ability to transfer oral communication skills from academic to professional settings (Cavanagh et al., 2019). Thus, researchers agree that students’ self-efficacy towards defending their thesis in an oral examination should also be promoted (Fidalgo et al., 2019; Ramos-Villagrasa et al., 2018).

Given the relevance of self-efficacy for academic achievement, an effort has been made to develop tools to register perception of efficacy in this context (Chemers et al., 2001; Elias & Loomis, 2000). However, following an extensive literature review, we found no instruments to assess self-efficacy towards writing an academic text and defending it in an oral examination. Multiple instruments have been developed to measure writing self-efficacy (Bruning et al., 2013; Schmidt & Alexander, 2012; Shell et al., 1989), and some of them have been validated in university students (Kavanoz & Yüksel, 2016; Prat-Sala & Redford, 2010; Ramos-Villagrasa et al., 2018). For example, Meza and González (2020) recently developed the self-efficacy scale for disciplinary academic writing, aimed at measuring self-efficacy when writing academic texts in specialized disciplines. The instrument includes items registering students’ self-efficacy when producing disciplinary texts and some of them could also be used when measuring writing self-efficacy in relation to writing a thesis (e.g., “I am able to organize my ideas in a text so that they are easily understood”). However, the scale does not include some of the key competencies needed to complete a thesis, such as following specific writing guidelines, not committing plagiarism, and presenting the work before an evaluating committee. Similarly, Mitchell et al. (2021) developed the situated academic writing self-efficacy scale, which measures self-efficacy in academic writing while considering contextual factors of the specific situation. Similar to Meza and González’s scale, this instrument includes an item that could be directly related to self-efficacy when writing a Bachelor’s or Master’s thesis (i.e., “I can combine or synthesize multiple sources I’ve read to create an original work product or text”). However, as in the previous case, most items do not specifically relate to the competencies needed to complete a thesis. In other words, the content validity of these instruments with respect to the construct of self-efficacy towards writing and defending academic texts may be compromised.

Instruments aimed at measuring students’ self-efficacy for public speaking (Frey & Vallade, 2018; Herrero et al., 2007) are even more scarce than those registering writing self-efficacy. To our knowledge, no tools have been developed to measure self-efficacy towards presenting an academic piece of work before an examining committee. This involves very specific tasks, such as answering the questions made by the members of the committee. Moreover, while the combination of writing and oral skills is needed to successfully complete a thesis (Castelló & Iñesta, 2012), and students need to perform relatively well in both areas (Fidalgo et al., 2019), there are no tools designed to simultaneously register students’ self-efficacy towards these two aspects. Given the above, our goal is to develop and validate a self-efficacy scale for writing and defending academic texts. The development of this tool is key for future research exploring the self-efficacy towards this specific task and its correlates (e.g., academic success) in university contexts.

Writing and defending a Bachelor’s or Master’s thesis is a compulsory requirement to earn a degree. Such a task involves very specific competencies needed to write and defend an academic piece of work before an examining committee. These include using writing guidelines, expressing ideas based on previous studies while not committing plagiarism, and discussing the results with an evaluating audience. One of the variables most strongly related to academic performance is self-efficacy (Komarraju & Nadler, 2013). However, the perception of efficacy that students have towards writing and defending academic texts has scarcely been studied. One of the reasons for this is the lack of instruments to evaluate students’ efficacy in relation to this specific task. To fill this gap in the literature, we developed the self-efficacy towards writing and defending academic texts scale and evaluated its psychometric properties. The items were generated following the teaching guides for Bachelor’s and Master’s theses and Bandura’s theory. To determine content validity, the relevance and clarity of the items generated were assessed by a group of 14 experts and Master students who showed high agreement that both relevance and clarity were high for all items. The following text describes the results referred to the rest of the validity and reliability evidences contrasted.

Our results indicate that the scale holds a unidimensional structure, with adequate structural, convergent, and criterion-related validity evidence. The scale’s unidimensional structure was supported by the results of the factor analysis model, indicating that students’ self-efficacy in relation to their thesis involves both writing and oral skills. This is in accordance with previous studies (Fidalgo et al., 2019) as well as with the European Higher Education Area (European Commission, 2006) that point out the relevance of a combination of writing and oral skills to successfully complete a thesis. The relations between self-efficacy towards writing and defending academic texts and theoretically related constructs were in the expected directions. Previous studies found a positive relation between perception of efficacy towards a specific task and overall self-efficacy (Ramos-Villagrasa et al., 2018). In line with this, students’ perceptions about their own ability to write and defend academic texts were positively related to their general self-efficacy. As expected, we also found a negative relation between students’ anxiety towards writing and defending academic texts and their perceptions of efficacy towards the same task. This is in accordance with previous research showing that anxiety levels tend to decrease when a person feels capable of successfully carrying out a task (Huerta et al., 2016; Wu et al., 2020).

The scale also showed adequate criterion-related validity. In accordance with previous studies showing a positive relation between self-efficacy and academic achievement (Doménech-Betoret et al., 2017; Komarraju & Nadler, 2013), participants with a higher perception of efficacy for writing and defending academic texts obtained higher scores in the writing task. Our results also indicated that participating in the educational intervention increased students’ self-efficacy towards writing and defending academic texts. As proposed by Bandura (1997) and in line with previous findings (Foulstone & Kelly, 2019; Greneer et al., 2021), self-efficacy is malleable and can improve through educational interventions. The proposed scale was able to detect changes in self-efficacy.

On the other hand, measurement invariance across sex was supported, and mean differences were explored according to this factor. Like previous studies examining college students’ self-efficacy (Huerta et al., 2016; Ramos-Villagrasa et al., 2018), we did not find differences regarding self-efficacy across sex. This suggests that both males and females hold similar levels of confidence towards writing and defending academic texts. Differences were found, however, between Master students and undergraduates. Although both groups increased their self-efficacy levels after the educational program, Master students were the ones who benefited the most. It should be noted, however, that the number of Master students was small. Bandura (1997) argues that previous experience with a task leads to feeling confident about conducting that specific task at hand. No differences were found in terms of self-efficacy between undergraduates and Master students at T0, but differences were found at T1. At the descriptive level, higher means were observed at T0 and T1 for Master students. It may be that having already completed a Bachelor’s thesis provides Master students with an experiential foundation that helps them improve their self-efficacy levels through the educational program. Future studies could use the self-efficacy towards writing and defending academic texts scale to examine the evolution of self-efficacy through different levels of schooling, from undergraduate to PhD students and to more senior academics.

To conclude, our findings support that the scale is a reliable and valid tool to measure university students’ self-efficacy for writing and defending academic texts. We believe the scale is useful to guide educational interventions aimed at increasing students’ self-efficacy towards this specific task. Providing students with strategies that build their confidence in writing and defending academic texts will most likely boost their self-efficacy. Our findings and those of previous studies show that the higher the self-efficacy towards a specific task, the lower the anxiety levels, and the better the academic results. Hence, the assessment and promotion of self-efficacy towards writing and defending academic texts will not only increase the likelihood of students completing their thesis but also have a positive impact on their wellbeing. The latter line of work is crucial if the data on mental health in university students are considered (Sorrel et al., 2020).