Cross-cultural invariance of the mental toughness inventory among Australian, Chinese, and Malaysian athletes: A Bayesian estimation approach

Daniel F. GUCCIARDI, Chun-Qing ZHANG, Vellapandian PONNUSAMY, Gangyan SI, Andreas STENLING

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlespeer-review

22 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The aims of this study were to assess the cross-cultural invariance of athletes' self-reports of mental toughness and to introduce and illustrate the application of approximate measurement invariance using Bayesian estimation for sport and exercise psychology scholars. Athletes from Australia (n = 353, Mage = 19.13, SD = 3.27, men = 161), China (n = 254, Mage = 17.82, SD = 2.28, men = 138), and Malaysia (n = 341, Mage = 19.13, SD = 3.27, men = 200) provided a cross-sectional snapshot of their mental toughness. The cross-cultural invariance of the mental toughness inventory in terms of (a) the factor structure (configural invariance), (b) factor loadings (metric invariance), and (c) item intercepts (scalar invariance) was tested using an approximate measurement framework with Bayesian estimation. Results indicated that approximate metric and scalar invariance was established. From a methodological standpoint, this study demonstrated the usefulness and flexibility of Bayesian estimation for single-sample and multigroup analyses of measurement instruments. Substantively, the current findings suggest that the measurement of mental toughness requires cultural adjustments to better capture the contextually salient (emic) aspects of this concept. Copyright © 2016 Human Kinetics, Inc.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)187-202
JournalJournal of Sport and Exercise Psychology
Volume38
Issue number2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Apr 2016

Citation

Gucciardi, D. F., Zhang, C.-Q., Ponnusamy, V., Si, G., & Stenling, A. (2016). Cross-cultural invariance of the mental toughness inventory among Australian, Chinese, and Malaysian athletes: A Bayesian estimation approach. Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 38(2), 187-202.

Keywords

  • Approximate measurement invariance
  • Bayesian
  • Cross-cultural psychology
  • Cultural sport psychology
  • Mentally tough

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