Development and validation of the Wisconsin Sport Specialization Questionnaire (WISSQ) for older adolescent athletes

The proliferation of youth sport specialisation may be concerning for the overall health of adolescent athletes, but no validated tool to measure specialisation exists. We aimed to assess the measurement properties and validate the Wisconsin Sport Specialization Questionnaire (WISSQ) in older adolescent athletes.

Using previously developed sport specialisation items with established content validity, questionnaires were administered to 14-18-year-old athletes residing in both regional and national settings, who were participating in organised sport. Confirmatory factor analyses and Rasch partial credit modelling independently assessed structural and concurrent validity and reliability in both datasets. The best-fitting national model was then fit onto the regional data to further assess the stability of the measurement properties.

The regional and national data included 474 (77% female, 86% non-Hispanic White) and 564 (38% female, 63% non-Hispanic White) athletes, respectively. Twelve of 25 items were retained in three domains (n=4 social, n=5 motivation, n=3 physical). One item cross-loaded on both the motivation and physical domains. The adapted regional (comparative fit index (CFI), 0.97; Tucker-Lewis index (TLI), 0.97; root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA), 0.04) and national (CFI, 0.99; TLI, 0.99; RMSEA, 0.05) datasets achieved good model fit. Internal consistency among the three subdomains ranged from Ω=0.78-0.88 (national) to Ω=0.73-0.83 (regional). All items contributed appropriately to measuring the construct of sport specialisation in the regional (infit/outfit: 0.77-1.16) and national (infit/outfit: 0.74-1.16) datasets.

We present the first validated tool to measure youth sport specialisation while considering physical, motivational and social characteristics of sport participation. The WISSQ is a valid, reliable assessment of sport specialisation in older adolescent athletes.