Design and validation of a questionnaire on self-perception of excellence in sport

Abstract

The objective of this work was to develop and validate a questionnaire that measures athletes' perception of the influence of personal characteristics, trainers, training, family, and environment on their sports results. The design and validation processes were carried out in three phases. In the first phase, an initial design of the questionnaire was built taking into account recommendations from a group of experts (validity of content). In the second phase, the questionnaire's parametric characteristics (factorial structure, reliability, construct validity and temporal stability) were analyzed in a sample of 630 participants, showing good statistical estimates. The analysis confirmed a structure based on six factors: Environment, sportsman, training features, trainer, training type, and family. In the last phase, the final version of the questionnaire was administered to 1,256 athletes in order to check for model quality by means of confirmatory factorial analysis. As a result of these studies, we can conclude that the questionnaire of Self-Perception of Excellence in Sport (CAED) achieves sufficient psychometric properties to be considered as a useful, valid, and reliable instrument for analyzing athletes' perceptions of the factors considered important for excellent athletic performance.