Initial psychometric testing of the coach-adapted version of the empowering and disempowering motivational climate questionnaire: A Bayesian approach

ABSTRACT

The present study examined the psychometric properties of the coach-adapted version of the Empowering and Disempowering Motivational Climate Questionnaire (EDMCQ) using Bayesian structural equation modelling (BSEM). The sample included 780 (M_age = 36.4; SD = 10.8; males n = 698; females n = 54; 28 participants did not report sex) youth sport coaches representing five European countries (i.e., England, France, Greece, Norway, and Spain). The results did not support a 34-item five-factor, hierarchical, a two-factor BSEM, or a bifactor BSEM model across the participating countries. However, the results supported a reduced 19-item first-order, two-factor BSEM model that largely showed approximate metric invariance, but not approximate scalar invariance across the five countries. The pool of items constituting empowering and disempowering motivational climates should be refined to further enhance the empirical operationalisation of the coach-adapted version of the EDMCQ. Advancing the quality of translation-back-translation procedures across cultures and conducting multi-national pilot testing seems warranted as well. These recommendations may help to identify the distinctive aspects of each underlying sub-dimension of the EDMCQ, where coaches are the respondents, and pave the way for further examination of the proposed hierarchical multidimensional factor structure and the cross-cultural equivalence of the EDMCQ for this population.

KEYWORDS:

• Coach-adapted version of the EDMCQ
• Bayesian structural equation modelling
• cross-cultural equivalence
• self-perceptions of coaching behaviours
• psychometric testing

Acknowledgments

Andreas Stenling was supported by grants from Umeå School of Sport Sciences and the Swedish National Centre for Research in Sports (Grants P2014-0043 and P2015-0114).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplementary data for this article can be accessed here.

Notes

¹ More details on the theories can be found in the supplemental material.

² More details on the EDMCQ can be found in the supplemental material.

³ At the request of one of the reviewers, we also examined differential item functioning (DIF) as a function of age using multiple indicators multiple causes (MIMIC) models. The results from these additional analyses did not indicate the presence of DIF on the coach-adapted version of the EDMCQ. The results from the MIMIC models are presented in the supplemental material.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the European Commission’s Seventh Framework Programme FP7/2007-2013 under the grant number 223600;FP7 Ideas: European Research Council [223600].