An Examination of the Sport Commitment Model for Athletes With Physical Disabilities

Sport commitment describes a psychological attachment to a sport that influences one's desire or resolve to continue involvement in it. Studying antecedents believed to influence long term commitment to sport among athletes with a disability will help ensure that participants gain those psychosocial and health outcomes from sport participation that benefit quality of life. Our purposes in this study were: (i) to examine the Sport Commitment Model (SCM) in terms of the magnitude of the contribution of antecedent factors (i.e., enjoyment, personal investment, involvement opportunities, social constraints, involvement alternatives) to sport commitment of athletes with disabilities; and (ii) to examine the model structure (i.e., original SCM, mediation, and direct/indirect model) that best reflects an understanding of the sport commitment antecedents for these athletes. A total of 157 adult athletes (M age = 34.87, SD = 11.78) with physical disabilities from both team and individual sports across the United States, Europe, and Asia completed the Sport Commitment Questionnaire. Data analyses indicated that sport involvement opportunities, followed by personal investment, were the strongest predictors of these athletes' sport commitments (R² = .66). Based on the principle of parsimony, the original structural equation model (χ² (215) = 384.95; RMSEA = .07; CFI = .95; SRMR = .06) was deemed better for understanding the mechanism of sport commitment than the mediation or direct/indirect models. We address implications of applying the SCM to athletes with disabilities, and we offer suggestions for future research.