Validation of a Chinese version of the physical activity enjoyment scale: Factorial validity, measurement equivalence, and predictive validity

Abstract

The present study examined the psychometric properties, factorial validity, and measurement equivalence across gender and three education levels of a Chinese short version of physical activity enjoyment scale (S-PACESC). Participants (N = 4051) were fifth to 12th grade public school students recruited from eight different geographic areas of mainland Chinese. Confirmatory factor analysis supported the unidimensionality of S-PACESC with great model fit. In addition, the S-PACESC was equivalent between genders and across three education levels (i.e. elementary, middle, and high school) at both configural, full metric, and full scalar levels. The latent means comparison revealed that boys perceived significantly higher physical activity (PA) enjoyment and the PA enjoyment tends to decrease as adolescents continue to age. PA enjoyment measured by S-PACESC successfully predicted moderate to vigorous PA (MVPA) for both total and various sub-samples. The S-PACESC is a valid tool that can be used to measure PA enjoyment for Chinese students.

Keywords:

• confirmatory factor analysis
• factorial validity
• measurement equivalence
• latent means comparison
• predictive validity
• physical activity enjoyment scale

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Social Science Foundation of China: [grant number 13CTY031].