Examining the Psychometric Properties of the Athletic Identity Measurement Scale-Plus

ABSTRACT

College student athletes are at risk for mental health difficulties. Athletic identity – the degree of strength and exclusivity to which a person identifies with the athletic role – is associated with health risk behaviors and mental health concerns broadly among student athletes. Given a variety of barriers to college athletes disclosing mental health difficulties, measuring athletic identity may be an indirect way to screen athletes for being at-risk for mental health concerns. The current study examined the factor structure of an increasingly popular measure of athletic identity (the AIMS-Plus) across two samples of self-identified athletes (N_study1 = 201; 60.2% male; 61.19% White; 21.39% Hispanic; N_Study2 = 175; 45.29% male; 70.86% White; 20.57% Hispanic) to offer a peer-reviewed validation of the measure. Results suggest that the factor structure of the AIMS-Plus was not supported; however, both a modified version of the AIMS-Plus (the AIMS-Plus-R) and the 7-item AIMS may be acceptable. Continued work refining measures of athletic identity is needed.

KEYWORDS:

• athletes
• college students
• identity
• psychometrics
• mental health

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Availability of data and material

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Supplemental Material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/15283488.2023.2219697.