Perceived Competence

Finally, perceived competence was measured with three items from the Perceived Competence for Learning scale (Center for Self-Determination Theory, 2021). The items are concerned with feelings or perceptions of competence with respect to an activity or domain. In this study, the activity or domain was nursing education during the COVID-19 pandemic. The items included “I feel confident in my ability to learn the materials in the course” and “I am able to achieve my goals in the course.” The perceived competence for the learning scale has high internal consistency, with an alpha measure of 0.80 (Williams and Deci, 1996). All response categories were accompanied by a seven-point scale that ranged from “Absolutely disagree” (1) to “Absolutely agree” (7) with a midpoint of “Neither” (4). Appendix Table 1 demonstrates the concepts and their indicators, along with some additional values (i.e., mean, standard deviation, skewness, and kurtosis).