Development and Validation of the Sport Emotion Questionnaire

Abstract

The present paper outlines the development of a sport-specific measure of precompetitive emotion to assess anger, anxiety, dejection, excitement, and happiness. Face, content, factorial, and concurrent validity were examined over four stages. Stage 1 had 264 athletes complete an open-ended questionnaire to identify emotions experienced in sport. The item pool was extended through the inclusion of additional items taken from the literature. In Stage 2 a total of 148 athletes verified the item pool while a separate sample of 49 athletes indicated the extent to which items were representative of the emotions anger, anxiety, dejection, excitement, and happiness. Stage 3 had 518 athletes complete a provisional Sport Emotion Questionnaire (SEQ) before competition. Confirmatory factor analysis indicated that a 22-item and 5-factor structure provided acceptable model fit. Results from Stage 4 supported the criterion validity of the SEQ. The SEQ is proposed as a valid measure of precompetitive emotion for use in sport settings.

The role of emotions on consumers' satisfaction within the fitness context

“…A great stream of research is focused on consumption-related emotions, but there is no agreement around the definition of the concept of emotion (Jones, Lane, Bray, Uphill, & Catlin, 2005;Scherer, 2005;Vallerand & Blanchard, 2000). Notwithstanding, it is commonly accepted that an emotion reflects a person's response to a stimulus event (Deci, 1980;Lazarus, 1991;Scherer, 2005) involving three components: cognitive component (i.e., subjective experience) arousal component (i.e., physiological changes), and motivational component (i.e., action tendencies) (Robazza, Pellizzari, Bertollo, & Hanin, 2008).…”

Competing Under Pressure: State Anxiety, Sports Performance and Assessment

“…Moreover, tests of the underlying theoretical assumptions and comparisons of findings across studies or over time will be increased. The athlete-generated expressions provided by the IZOF are a valuable source of descriptive data that could also be used, for example, to screen out, categorise and later confirm discrete emotions identified as vital for athletes (Cerin et al, 2000;Jones et al, 2005). Thus, the IZOF and the perspective of discrete emotions are not necessarily competing alternatives.…”

“…The individualised scales applied by the IZOF framework, in which athletes choose or generate only idiographic items deemed personally meaningful, are also more sensitive to emotional experiences compared to standardised, nomothetic questionnaires (Hanin, 2000a). The idiographic scales are also limited because they make comparisons of findings across athletes or studies overly difficult (Jones, Lane, Bray, Uphill, & Catlin, 2005). Moreover, in their present form they do not differentiate between conceptually distinct emotional or cognitive states such as mood, emotions, motives or attitudes (Lazarus, 2000a).…”

“…Such research needs a sound base for theory testing, and alternative approaches than the IZOF need to be considered. The work by Lazarus (1991Lazarus ( , 1999Lazarus ( , 2000a has recently received renewed attention in sport psychology (Jones et al, 2005;Uphill & Jones, 2004), aiming to identify and explore discrete emotions of relevance for sports performance. Accordingly, discrete emotions are regarded as being tied to distinct characteristics by the appraisals and specific core relational themes (cf.…”

“…Considering anxiety as part of a broader emotional framework, it is encouraging to note that a nomothetic scale, specifically designed to assess a spectrum of discrete emotions in competitive sports, was recently proposed (i.e., The Sport Emotion Questionnaire; Jones et al, 2005). Bearing in mind the psychometric weaknesses detected with the CSAI-2 after many years of usage, it is important that this new scale as well as future scales presented continuously are exposed to rigorous tests on their psychometric properties.…”