Development of a questionnaire for the assessment of coping strategies employed by athletes in competitive sport settings

Objectives: To develop an original self-report instrument for the assessment of athletes' coping strategies in competitive sport settings and to provide preliminary evidence for its factorial, convergent, concurrent, and differential validity. Method: French–Canadian athletes ( N=316; M age=17.4 years) completed l'Inventaire des Stratégies de Coping en Compétition Sportive (ISCCS) along with three measures of cognitive appraisal (i.e. perceived relevance of the competition, sense of control, and perceived goal attainment), either the PANAS or the CSAI-2, and either the WOCQ, the MCOPE, or a social desirability scale. All scales were administered within six hours of completion of a sport competition. Results: A sequential four-stage confirmatory factor analysis revealed an adequate fit for a 10-factor model and its superiority over a two- and a three-factor model. The subscales of the ISCCS correlated meaningfully with appraisal variables, positive and negative affect (PANAS), cognitive and somatic anxiety (CSAI-2), and the coping strategies of both WOCQ and MCOPE questionnaires, thus providing evidence for their concurrent and convergent validity. A multivariate factorial analysis of variance lent partial support for the differential validity of the ISCCS as effort expenditure, mental imagery, relaxation, and venting of unpleasant emotion varied significantly across athletes' level of expertise whereas venting of unpleasant emotion and effort expenditure differed significantly between genders. Conclusions: The results revealed promising features of the ISCCS. Future research should assess whether the factorial structure of the ISCCS is invariant across athletes' genders and expertise levels as well as across the different phases of a sport competition.