Competence diagnosis in football (soccer): The competence inventory professional football (KIPF)

Abstract

In an increasingly professionalised world of football, the importance of theoretically based competence development among professional football players is growing. With the Competence Inventory Professional Football (KIPF), this article in the journal Gruppe. Interaktion. Organisation. (GIO) presents a measure to operationalise professional competences of football players. The KIPF is based on a competence structure model which has been developed following the results of a literature research and expert interviews. The development process of the questionnaire items, the conduction of an explorative factor analysis as well as a confirmatory factor analysis, and the examination of psychometric quality criteria are described in detail. The KIPF development and validation are based on quantitative data of 427 football players. The final version of the KIPF comprises the following eight competence dimensions: Tactical Knowledge, Knowledge of Nutrition and Health, Use of Resilience Methods, Dealing with Media, Communication Skills, Team Supporting Adaptability, Mental Strength, and Criticism Capacity. Each competence dimension is covered by three items. Possible KIPF applications in practice (for coaches, officials, player agents, professional footballers) as well as in science are presented. Furthermore, issues of transfer to women’s football, other cultural contexts and other team sports are discussed. The items (not yet validated) in English are available in the Electronic Supplementary Material (ESM) to this article.