Multicultural Invariance and Validation of the Mental Toughness Index in North American and Mexican Athletes

Abstract

Mental toughness (TM) is a widely investigated topic related to professions, personalities and sports activity. The work of the sports psychologist is to support the management of emotions, coping with factors and setting goals, making use of the multicultural characteristics of athletes. The invariance of TM was examined between American and Mexican athletes through the invariance test. It was performed by confirmatory factor analysis of multiple groups with increasingly restrictive models. The fit of the model data in both samples was very good (Mexican CFI = .988, Mexican RMSEA = .085; US CFI = .998, US RMSEA = .032). The scalar invariance model was selected as the best fit (CFI scalar = .981, RMSEA scalar = .077). The results imply that the meaning of the construct is the same in both cultures and its scores can be directly compared.