Exploratory factor analysis of the functional movement screen in elite athletes

The functional movement screen is developed to examine individuals' movement patterns through 7 functional tasks. The purpose of this study was to identify the internal consistency and factor structure of the 7 tasks of the functional movement screen in elite athletes; 290 elite athletes from a variety of Chinese national teams were assessed using the functional movement screen. Cronbach's alpha was calculated for the scores of the 7 tasks. Exploratory factor analysis was performed to explore the factor structure of the functional movement screen. The mean and standard deviation of the sum score were 15.2 ± 3.0. A low Cronbach's alpha (0.58) was found for the scores of the 7 tasks. Exploratory factor analysis extracted 2 factors with eigenvalues greater than 1, and these 2 factors explained 47.3% of the total variance. The first factor had a high loading on the rotatory stability (loading = 0.99) and low loadings on the other 6 tasks (loading range: 0.04-0.34). The second factor had high loadings on the deep squat, hurdle step and inline lunge (loading range: 0.46-0.61) and low loadings on the other 3 tasks (loading range: 0.12-0.32). The 7 tasks of the functional movement screen had low internal consistency and were not indicators of a single factor. Evidence for unidimensionality was not found for the functional movement screen in elite athletes. More attention should be paid to the score of each task rather than the sum score when we interpret the functional movement screen scores.