Toward a better assessment of perceived social influence: The relative role of significant others on young athletes

Abstract

The purpose of this three‐study paper was to develop and validate the Perceived Social Influence in Sport Scale‐2 (PSISS‐2) that aimed to resolve the limitations of PSISS‐1 in assessing the relative social influence of significant others in youth sport. In Study 1, a pool of 60 items generated from revisiting a qualitative dataset about significant others of young athletes were examined by two expert panel reviews in terms of content validity, clarity, coverage, and age‐appropriateness, leading to the development of 16 items of the PSISS‐2. In Study 2, multi‐group exploratory structural equation model for PSISS‐2 was conducted among 904 young athletes, and the results supported a model comprising positive influence (ie, conditional and unconditional positive influence combined), punishment (ie, conditional negative influence), and dysfunction (ie, unconditional negative influence) as three factors. The goodness of fit of the three‐factor model was acceptable and invariant across the coach‐, father‐, mother‐, and teammates‐versions of PSISS‐2. In support of the criterion validity of PSISS‐2, the three factors explained substantial variance of young athletes’ perceived competence, effort, enjoyment, and trait anxiety in sport. Study 3 examined the relationship between PSISS‐2 factors, psychological need support, and controlling behaviors in a subsample of 452 young athletes, and the findings supported the concurrent validity and discriminant validity of the scale. In conclusion, the data are supportive of PSISS‐2. The three factors of the scale (ie, positive influence, punishment, and dysfunction) may form a new framework for understanding and comparing the relative role of significant others in youth sport.

Social Influences of Teachers, Classmates, and Parents on Children's Commitment to Physical Education and Language Education

“…We applied the PSIS [22] to evaluate social influences of significant others in terms of positive reinforcement and punishment. The findings were supportive to the validity and the proposed predictive power of PSIS as reported in previous studies [21,22]. Positive reinforcement and punishment from social agents, in general, established positive and negative relationships with the commitment outcomes (i.e., competence, enjoyment, and effort) respectively, which was consis-effort (β PE = -0.18, p = < 0.01) in PE-group, but those in LE-group were not significant except the unexpected significant positive correlation with competence in LE-group (β LE = 0.27, p = < 0.01).…”

“…The findings supported the validity and predictive power of PSIS in the measurement of social influence from coach, teammates, and parents on children and adolescents [22]. Studies using PSIS found that positive reinforcement and punishment from significant others respectively formed positive and negative relationships with children's and adolescents' competence, enjoyment, and effort in sport, and moderate to large (25% to 57%) amount of variance of these outcome variables were explained [21,22].…”

“…Social influences from teachers, classmates, and parents established significant zero-order correlations with almost all the enjoyment and effort outcomes, but the predictive values of some of the social agents reduced and became non-significant in the regression model because the effects of social influences from other social agents on the outcomes were taken into consideration. This interesting result pattern underscored the importance of taking multiple social agents into account for examining social influences on children, from one social agent in relation to that of another [21,22].…”

“…Previous studies of achievement goal theory [33][34][35] showed that children exhibited higher competence, enjoyment, effort in sport when significant others provided positive reinforcement for children's improvement, effort, and mastery of skills (i.e., a mastery approach climate), than when they were punished or criticised for mistakes or poor normative outcomes (i.e., a performance avoidance climate). Although a few studies of achievement goal theory compared the relative role of teachers/ coaches, parents, and classmates/teammates [36][37][38][39], the findings were challenged by the inconsistency of the measurement tools of social influences used for different social agents [21,22]. Social influence is conceptualised in self-determination theory [32] as the psychosocial environment in which social agents support and thwart the psychological needs of individuals, affecting the motivation, behaviours, and well-being of individuals in the behavioural context [40][41][42].…”

“…To summarise, research has documented the importance of studying the relative role of teachers, classmates, and parents on children's commitment to school, but the focus has been centering on social influence in terms of support. Little attention has been placed on examining the maladaptive ies only examined social influence from coaches, teammates, and parents in the contexts of elite youth sport [21,22], but the validity and predictive power PSIS in the context of education have yet to be tested. Also, research has shown that significant others such as parents do not offer the same level of support to children's participation in physical activity as compared to their support to children's academic performance [4][5][6].…”