Third-Generation Quantitative Assessment of Athletic Identity: Clarifying the Concept

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Britton W. Brewer ^*, Judy L. Van Raalte ^**, Allen E. Cornelius ^*** and Miquel Pans ^****

^(*) Department of Psychology, Springfield College, Springfield, MA. USA
^(**) Springfield College and Wuhan Sports University MA. USA Department of Psychology, Springfield College, Springfield, MA. USA
^(***) Fielding University, Colorado Springs CO. USA
^(****) Department Physical Education and Sports, Universitat de València, C/ Gascó Oliag, 3, 46010 València, Spain

Citation

Brewer, B.W., Van Raalte, J.L., Cornelius, A.E., Pans, M. (2022). Third-Generation Quantitative Assessment of Athletic Identity: Clarifying the Concept. International Journal of Sport Psychology, 53(5), 434-458. doi:10.7352/IJSP.2022.53.434

Abstract

An expanded and reconceptualized version of the Athletic Identity Measure- ment Scale (AIMS) was developed through a process that consisted of item pool generation, administration of items to a development sample of college student sport participants (N = 408), item evaluation, and administration of items to validation samples of 350 intercollegiate student-athletes, 54 intercollegiate stu- dent-athletes, and 104 college student sport participants, respectively. The process yielded a unidimensional athletic identity scale, two subscales assessing athletic identity properties (i.e., prominence, self-worth contingency), and two subscales assessing athletic identity processes (i.e., self-presentation, social reinforcement). Support was obtained for the internal consistency, temporally stability, and facto- rial, convergent, and divergent validity of scores on the resulting Athletic Identi- ty Measurement Scales-Third Generation (AIMS-3G). The AIMS-3G has poten- tial utility for assessing athletic identity and associated properties and processes.

Keywords: Self-Identity, Sport, Measurement

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