CROSS-CULTURAL VALIDATION OF THE ATHLETES’ RECEIVED SUPPORT QUESTIONNAIRE (ARSQ) FOR CHINESE COLLEGIATE ATHLETES
Article Sidebar
Main Article Content
Abstract
College student-athletes' social support exerts a crucial effect on their athletic performance, motivation, and psychological well-being. Recognizing the importance of measuring this support accurately, this study sought to adapt and validate the Athlete's Received Support Questionnaire (ARSQ) for use among Chinese college student-athletes.
Purpose
The first objective was to translate the ARSQ into Chinese, while the second objective focused on evaluating its psychometric properties in this specific context.
Methods
Data were collected from 910 participants across three phases. In the first stage, 365 student-athletes participated in an exploratory factor analysis, which helped identify the factor structure of the questionnaire. The second phase involved confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), internal consistency evaluation, and correlation analysis with a larger sample of 502 athletes, demonstrating strong validity and reliability of the adapted scale. The third phase included a test-retest reliability assessment with 43 participants over a 2-week period, confirming the scale's stability. These validation steps ensured the robustness of the adapted Chinese ARSQ.
Results
The results indicate that the adapted ARSQ is a reliable and valid instrument for assessing perceived support among college student-athletes. This tool can help researchers, coaches, and educators better understand and enhance the support systems that contribute to athletic performance and well-being in this population.
Conclusion
The psychometric evaluation established the Chinese ARSQ as a reliable and valid measure (Cronbach's alpha = 0.962, ICC = 0.959) for assessing received social support among collegiate athletes in China. This culturally adapted instrument enhances research on athlete support systems and informs evidence-based interventions to optimize psychological well-being and athletic performance. Future investigations should examine support perception variations across sport disciplines and assess longitudinal effects on mental health and competitive outcomes, thereby advancing holistic athlete development strategies.
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
References
Beaton, D. E., Bombardier, C., Guillemin, F., and Ferraz, M. B. (2000). Guidelines for the process of cross-cultural adaptation of self-report measures. Spine, 25(24), 3186-3191.
Brislin, R. W. (1970). Back-translation for cross-cultural research. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 1(3), 185-216.
Bujang, M. A., and Baharum, N. (2017). A simplified guide to determination of sample size requirements for estimating the value of intraclass correlation coefficient: a review. Archives of Orofacial Sciences, 12(1), 1-11.
Cheng, H. Y., and Wang, J. N. (2022). A cross-cultural comparison study of the relationships between perceived coaching behaviors and student athletes’ competitive anxiety. Journal of Teaching in Physical Education, 42(4), 600-608.
Cohen, S., and Wills, T. A. (1985). Stress, social support, and the buffering hypothesis. Psychological Bulletin, 98(2), 310-357.
Costello, A. B., and Osborne, J. (2005). Best practices in exploratory factor analysis: four recommendations for getting the most from your analysis. Practical Assessment, Research and Evaluation, 10(7), 1-9.
Creswell, J. W., and Clark, V. L. P. (2017). Designing and conducting mixed methods research. New York: SAGE publications.
Cutrona, C. E., and Russell, D. W. (1990). Type of social support and specific stress: toward a theory of optimal matching. In B. R. Sara son, I. G. Sarason, and G. R. Pierce (Eds.), Social support: An interactional view (pp. 319-366). New York: John Wiley and sons.
Fornell, C., and Larcker, D. F. (1981). Evaluating structural equation models with unobservable variables and measurement error. Journal of Marketing Research, 18(1), 39-50.
Freeman, P., Coffee, P., Moll, T., Rees, T., and Sammy, N. (2014). The ARSQ: the athletes’ received support questionnaire. Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 36(2), 189-202.
Galli, N., and Vealey, R. S. (2008). "Bouncing back" from adversity: athletes' experiences of resilience. The Sport Psychologist, 22(3), 316-335.
Hair, J. F., Black, W. C., Babin, B. J., and Anderson, R. E. (2014). Multivariate data analysis (7th ed.). England: Pearson Education, Inc.
Hambleton, R. K., and Zenisky, A. L. (2011). 3 - Translating and adapting tests for cross-cultural assessments. In D. Matsumoto and F. J. R. van de Vijver (Eds.), Cross-cultural research methods in psychology (pp. 46-70). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hu, L. T., and Bentler, P. M. (1999). Cutoff criteria for fit indexes in covariance structure analysis: Conventional criteria versus new alternatives. Structural Equation Modeling: A Multidisciplinary Journal, 6(1), 1-55.
Kline, P. (2013). Handbook of psychological testing (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge.
Koo, T. K., and Li, M. Y. (2016). A guideline of selecting and reporting intraclass correlation coefficients for reliability research. Journal of Chiropractic Medicine, 15(2), 155-163.
Krueger, R. A., and Casey, M. A. (2014). Focus groups: A practical guide for applied research (5th ed.). New York: Sage Publications.
Li, C., Kawabata, M., and Zhang, L. (2018). Validity and reliability of the sport motivation scale-ii for Chinese athletes. International Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 16(1), 51-64.
Nunnally, J. C., and Bernstein, I. H. (1994). Psychometric theory (3rd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.
R Core Team. (2024). A language and environment for statistical computing. (Online). Retrieved February 4, 2025, from R Foundation for Statistical Computing website: https://www.R-project.org/
Rees, T., and Hardy, L. (2000). An investigation of the social support experiences of high-level sports performers. The Sport Psychologist, 14(4), 327-347.
Smith, B., and Sparkes, A. C. (2020). Qualitative interviewing in the sport and exercise sciences. In B. Smith and A. C. Sparkes (Eds.), Routledge handbook of qualitative research in sport and exercise (pp. 213-225). New York: Routledge.
Tamminen, K. A., and Gaudreau, P. (2014). Coping, social support, and emotion regulation in teams. In M. R. Beauchamp and M. A. Eys (Eds.), Group dynamics in exercise and sport psychology (2nd ed., pp. 222-239). New York: Routledge.
Wang, S., and Mallinckrodt, B. (2006). Acculturation, attachment, and psychosocial adjustment of Chinese/Taiwanese international students. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 53(4), 422-433.
