Validation of the athlete psychological strain questionnaire among United States collegiate athletes

Psychological strain is an important facet of mental health amongst athletes. Having proper assessment tools for psychological strain can contribute to the screening for and prevention of negative mental health among athletes. The Athlete Psychological Strain Questionnaire, is a 10-item instrument used to assess psychological strain amongst athletes. The scale has been validated among samples of elite athletes. Despite psychological strain being relevant to collegiate athletes, the questionnaire has not been fully investigated among this group. Moreover, previous studies have not investigated invariance of the measure by gender. The present study aimed to assess the factor structure of the Athlete Psychological Strain Questionnaire, measurement invariance across gender, and associations between the Athlete Psychological Strain Questionnaire scores and other relevant measures, using a national sample of 1726 American collegiate athletes (M_age = 20.10, SD_age = 1.83). The sample was randomly partitioned into exploratory (n = 403) and confirmatory (n = 1323) samples. Factor analysis and measurement invariance testing were conducted. Factor analysis results indicated a three-factor structure with good fit indices and is consistent with prior literature. Measurement invariance was established for men and women collegiate athletes. The correlations between the Athlete Psychological Strain Questionnaire and relevant constructs were assessed. The Athlete Psychological Strain Questionnaire may be a viable questionnaire to assess for psychological strain among collegiate athletes.