Investigation of Psychometric Characteristics of Persian Version of Sport Attributional Style Scale (SASS) Among Elite Athletes

Abstract

Background: Causal attribution has a significant role in developing and improving athletes᾿ ability. Sport attributional style scale (SASS) measures six attributional dimensions in sports. Hanrahan et al. stated that SASS has an acceptable reliability and validity in sports. However, psychometric characteristics of this scale have not yet been studied on Iranian athletes’ population. Objectives: To determine the psychometric characteristics of SASS with 16 items (long form) in elite Iranian athletes’ population. Methods: This research is a descriptive-exploratory study. The English version of SASS was translated into Persian and extra comparison of the original and backward translated versions was done. The statistical population consisted of 2,853 elite team athletes and 1,456 elite individual athletes. From that population, 192 elite team athletes and 144 elite individual athletes were randomly selected as the sample from different sport clubs in Tehran in year of 2014. Results: The content validity of the backward translation of the original version was confirmed. Coefficients of Cronbach’s alpha of SASS in team and individual sports was 0.95 and 0.98, respectively. Construct validity of four factors of SASS in team sports after failure and in individual sports after success, five factors of SASS in individual sports after failure, and six factors of SASS in team sports after success, and some items of SASS components were approved. Internal consistency, convergent validity, divergent validity, and construct reliability of new scale were approved. Conclusions: The present study showed that SASS has suitable reliability and overall, four factors and some items in this scale were detected to have acceptable validity in elite Iranian athletes’ population.