Development and initial factor validation of the French Conformity to the Sport Ethic Scale (CSES)

Coker-Cranney et al. (2018) recently stressed the need for the development and validation of a questionnaire that assesses a young athlete’s level of conformity to sport ethic norms. The objective of this study was to develop and begin an initial factor validation of the Conformity to the Sport Ethic Scale (CSES), a scale assessing the conformity of teenage athletes from all competition levels to these sport ethic norms. Following the steps suggested by DeVellis (2012) for scale development and validation, a convenience sample of 1096 French-Canadian athletes between 14 and 18 years and who participated in an organized sport were recruited to partake in an online study assessing their conformity to the sport ethic. The CSES was developed to include four dimensions based on the qualitative work of Hughes and Coakley (1991), namely, self-sacrifice, striving for distinction, accepting risks/playing through pain and refusing to accept limits. To identify latent factors underlying the CSES exploratory structural equation modeling (ESEM) was performed using Mplus version 8.0. The CSES includes 20 items in three factors: striving for distinction (6 items), self-sacrifice (4 items) and refusing to accept limits (10 items). The resulting factor structure was invariant between boys and girls. Internal consistency of these subscales was acceptable. All correlations between subscales were significant. This tool is the first step to measure conformity to the Sport Ethic norms and will allow for further research in this area.