Search

Background: Causal attribution has a significant role in developing and improving athletes᾿ ability. Sport attributional style scale (SASS) measures six attributional dimensions in sports. Hanrahan et al. stated that SASS has an acceptable reliability and validity in sports. However, psychometric characteristics of this scale have not yet been studied on Iranian athletes’ population. Objectives: To determine the psychometric characteristics of SASS with 16 items (long form) in elite Iranian athletes’ population. Methods: This research is a descriptive-exploratory study. The English version of SASS was translated into Persian and extra comparison of the original and backward translated versions was done. The statistical population consisted of 2,853 elite team athletes and 1,456 elite individual athletes. From that population, 192 elite team athletes and 144 elite individual athletes were randomly selected as the sample from different sport clubs in Tehran in year of 2014. Results: The content validity of the backward translation of the original version was confirmed. Coefficients of Cronbach’s alpha of SASS in team and individual sports was 0.95 and 0.98, respectively. Construct validity of four factors of SASS in team sports after failure and in individual sports after success, five factors of SASS in individual sports after failure, and six factors of SASS in team sports after success, and some items of SASS components were approved. Internal consistency, convergent validity, divergent validity, and construct reliability of new scale were approved. Conclusions: The present study showed that SASS has suitable reliability and overall, four factors and some items in this scale were detected to have acceptable validity in elite Iranian athletes’ population.

Background: The current study aimed at investigating the relationships among three variables of sport attributional style, sport self-efficacy, and creativity to provide a theoretical model of relationships between these variables in elite team athletes based on the structural equation modeling. Objectives: Providing theoretical model of relationships between sport attributional styles, sport self-efficacy, and creativity in elite team athletes using structural equation modeling. Methods: The statistical population consisted of 2853 elite team athletes. Out of the population, 192 elite team athletes were randomly selected as the sample from different sport clubs in Tehran, Iran, in 2014. The sport-confident questionnaire, sport attributional style scale, and the creativity questionnaire were employed to collect the data. Then, AMOS version 23 was used to apply structural equation modeling. Results: The measurement and structural models (after success, after failure) of elite team athletes well fitted the data. Standard coefficients of all components and indices (questions) were significant (P < 0.05), except for direct coefficients between sport attributional style and creativity (P = 0.297 after success and P = 0.640 after failure). Conclusions: The current study results showed a positive significant relationship between sport self-efficacy and sport attributional styles. Moreover, sport self-efficacy had a mediating role between sport attributional styles and creativity. Thus, identifying structural relationships between these variables was of great benefit to promote athletes’ mental health.