Sport and performance psychology focuses on psychological processes involved in athletic participation, training, competition, physical activity, and performance under pressure. Unlike general personality or emotional constructs, sport-specific measures assess how people function in structured achievement contexts characterized by evaluation, uncertainty, physical demands, discipline, competition, and social comparison.
This domain includes motivation, goal orientation, self-determination, competitive anxiety, coping, mental skills, team dynamics, coach-athlete relationships, moral behavior, personality resources, youth sport, and psychological factors associated with burnout or maladaptive involvement. Some instruments are research-based sport psychology measures, while others are practical tools used in training, coaching, and athlete support.
These measures assess motives for sport participation, achievement goals, competitive orientation, perceived success, and the motivational climate created by coaches, teams, or training environments. They describe why athletes engage in sport and how they define effort, success, rivalry, and achievement.
The Physical Activity and Leisure Motivation Scale (PALMS) extends motivational assessment beyond competitive sport to a broader range of physical and leisure activities.
The Sport Orientation Questionnaire (SOQ) assesses competitiveness, win orientation, and goal orientation, capturing individual differences in achievement-related sport motivation.
The Task and Ego Orientation in Sport Questionnaire (TEOSQ) measures goal orientation toward mastery (task) versus comparison (ego).
The Perception of Success Questionnaire (POSQ) distinguishes between task-oriented and ego-oriented definitions of success.
The Perceived Motivational Climate in Sport Questionnaire (PMCSQ-2) evaluates the motivational climate created by coaches, teams, and sport environments, including mastery-focused and performance-focused climates.
These measures apply Self-Determination Theory to sport, exercise, walking, and physical activity. They assess motivational regulation, psychological need satisfaction, perceived competence, autonomy support, and motives for physical activity.
The Sport Motivation Scale (SMS-6) applies these principles to athletic contexts.
The Psychological Need Thwarting Scale (PNTS) and related instruments assess the frustration of basic needs, particularly in sport and performance contexts.
The Psychological Need States in Sport Scale (PNSSS) assesses psychological need satisfaction in sport, including athletes' experiences of autonomy, competence, and relatedness.
The Sport Climate Questionnaire (SCQ) assesses perceived autonomy support in sport, coaching, and athletic contexts.
The Psychological Need Satisfaction in Walking Scale (PNSWS) assesses satisfaction of autonomy, competence, and relatedness in walking and physical activity contexts.
The Behavioural Regulation for Walking Questionnaire (BRWQ) assesses motivational regulation of walking behavior.
The Behavioural Regulation in Exercise Questionnaire (BREQ) assesses self-determined and controlled forms of motivation for exercise.
The Motives for Physical Activity Measure (MPAM-R) assesses motives for physical activity, including interest/enjoyment, competence, appearance, fitness, and social motives.
The Coach Controlling Style Scale (CCBS) assesses controlling interpersonal behaviors by coaches, including pressure, intimidation, conditional regard, and excessive personal control.
These measures assess anxiety, stress, recovery, emotional activation, and psychological states before or during competition. They focus on how athletes respond to evaluation, uncertainty, pressure, and the demands of performance situations.
The Competitive State Anxiety Inventory (CSAI-2) assesses cognitive anxiety, somatic anxiety, and self-confidence in competitive situations.
The Sport Competition Anxiety Test is an early and widely used measure of trait competitive anxiety.
The Sport Anxiety Scale (SAS-2) provides a multidimensional assessment of sport-specific anxiety, including worry, somatic anxiety, and concentration disruption.
The Recovery-Stress Questionnaire for Athletes (RESTQ-Sport) assesses the balance between stress and recovery processes, providing a multidimensional profile of physical, emotional, and psychological load in athletes.
These measures assess psychological skills that support training and competition, including coping, self-regulation, mental toughness, performance strategies, imagery, metacognitive control, flow, and attitudes toward psychological preparation or support.
The Athletic Coping Skills Inventory (ACSI) assesses skills such as coping with adversity, concentration, confidence, and coachability.
The Ottawa Mental Skills Assessment Tool (OMSAT) evaluates a broader set of psychological skills relevant to performance, including goal setting, imagery, emotional control, and focus.
The Coping Function Questionnaire (CFQ) assesses coping strategies used in sport-specific stressful situations.
The Mental Toughness Scale (MTS) assesses persistence, resilience, confidence, and effective functioning under pressure or adversity.
The Test of Performance Strategies (TOPS-2) assesses the use of psychological strategies in both training and competition, including goal setting, self-talk, emotional control, and attentional focus.
The Mental Skills Survey for Athletes (MSSA) provides a comprehensive assessment of mental skills relevant to sport performance, including confidence, imagery, anxiety management, and concentration, offering a detailed profile of psychological preparedness.
The Vividness of Movement Imagery Questionnaire (VMIQ-2) assesses the clarity and vividness of visual and kinesthetic imagery, reflecting an important component of mental rehearsal in sport.
The Sport Imagery Questionnaire (SIQ) assesses athletes' use of imagery for cognitive and motivational functions, including skill rehearsal, strategy planning, goal imagery, arousal regulation, and mastery.
The Dispositional Flow Scale (DFS-2) assesses the tendency to experience flow during activity, including concentration, sense of control, and altered experience of time.
These instruments assess cohesion, team climate, coach-athlete relationships, leadership in sport, communal coping, and relational processes that influence performance and adaptation in sport settings.
The Group Environment Questionnaire (GEQ) is a classic measure of team cohesion, assessing both task and social integration within teams.
The Coach-Athlete Relationship Questionnaire (CART-Q) evaluates the quality of the coach–athlete relationship, including closeness, commitment, and complementarity.
The Leadership Scale for Sports (LSS-15) assesses perceived leadership behaviors in sport contexts.
The Communal Coping Strategies Inventory for Competitive Team Sports (CCSICTS) assesses collective coping strategies used by athletes and teams to manage competitive stressors and shared performance demands.
These instruments highlight that performance in sport is not purely individual, but embedded in relational and group processes.
These measures assess personal resources, perfectionism, optimism and pessimism, athletic identity, volitional qualities, self-efficacy, individual competitive style, and psychophysiological or typological characteristics relevant to sport participation and performance.
The Athletic Identity Measurement Scale (AIMS) assesses the extent to which individuals identify with the athlete role.
The Sport Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale (SMPS-2) assesses perfectionistic tendencies in sport, including concerns over mistakes, personal standards, and socially prescribed expectations.
The Questionnaire Prescreening of Optimism and Pessimism (QPOP) assesses optimism and pessimism in sport and performance contexts.
The Yoga Self-Efficacy Scale (YSES) assesses perceived confidence in performing yoga practices and maintaining yoga-related behaviors.
These measures assess prosocial and antisocial behavior, moral decision-making, rule-following, anger, aggressive tendencies, sportspersonship, and attitudes toward doping or performance enhancement.
The Prosocial and Antisocial Behavior in Sport Scale (PABSS) assesses both cooperative and harmful behavior toward teammates and opponents.
The Competitive Aggressiveness and Anger Scale (CAAS) assesses anger and aggressive tendencies specifically in sport contexts.
The Attitudes to Moral Decision-Making in Youth Sport Questionnaire (AMDYSQ) captures moral attitudes relevant to competition, including cheating and gamesmanship.
The Moral Judgment Test in Physical Education represents a related approach to evaluating ethical reasoning in sport and exercise contexts.
The Spirit of Sports (SOS) scale reflects broader value-oriented and ethical dimensions of sport participation.
The Performance Enhancement Attitude Scale (PEAS) measures attitudes toward doping and performance-enhancing substances, capturing another risk-related aspect of sport participation.
These measures assess exhaustion, reduced sense of accomplishment, sport devaluation, compulsive exercise, dependence-like involvement, psychological strain, and other maladaptive consequences of intense or poorly regulated sport participation.
The Athlete Burnout Questionnaire (ABQ) assesses emotional and physical exhaustion, reduced sense of accomplishment, and sport devaluation. Burnout itself is addressed in more detail in the dedicated burnout domain.
The Exercise Addiction Inventory (EAI) assesses compulsive and excessive exercise patterns, reflecting an addiction-like form of maladaptive involvement in physical activity.
The Exercise Dependence Scale (EDS) assesses symptoms associated with compulsive or excessive exercise behavior.
The Athlete Psychological Strain Questionnaire (APSQ) is a brief screening tool designed to assess psychological distress in athletes, including emotional strain, self-regulation difficulties, and performance-related stress. It is particularly useful for identifying mental health risks in elite sport contexts.
These instruments highlight that high involvement in sport can have both adaptive and maladaptive forms.
These measures assess psychological aspects of coaching activity, including coaching motivation, pedagogical style, professional effectiveness, teaching skills, and individual patterns of interaction with athletes.
These measures assess psychological aspects of youth sport, including young athletes' motivation, self-esteem, training anxiety, perceived sport experience, and parental attitudes or behavior in supporting a child's sport participation.
⇒ Goals and Motivation. Sport motivation overlaps with broader motivational systems through achievement goals, persistence, competitiveness, aspiration, and personal meaning.
⇒ Emotion Regulation. Competitive anxiety, coping, pre-performance states, and mental skills overlap with broader emotion regulation and self-regulatory processes.
Sport and performance psychology integrates motivation, emotion regulation, coping, mental skills, team processes, moral functioning, identity, and adaptation to achievement pressure.
Assessment in this domain should distinguish stable sport-related traits, current competitive states, motivational climate, psychological skills, social context, and maladaptive outcomes such as burnout or compulsive involvement.
A comprehensive interpretation considers the athlete's goals, training context, developmental stage, team environment, coach relationship, family support, and the balance between high involvement and psychological well-being.