Sport And Exercise Psychology: A Critical Introduction

7=“often”) how often they use five specific categories of imagery. These categories
include “motivation general—mastery” (e.g., imagining appearing confident in front of
others), “motivation general—arousal” (e.g., imagining the stress and/or excitement
associated with competition), “motivation specific” (e.g., imagining winning a medal),
“cognitive general” (e.g., imagining various strategies for a competitive event) and
“cognitive specific” (e.g., mentally practising a skill). The six items that comprise each
sub-scale are averaged to yield a score that indicates to what extent respondents use each
of the five functions of imagery. According to Hall (1998), this test has acceptable
psychometric characteristics. This claim is supported by Gumming and Ste-Marie (2001)
who reported internal consistency values of 0.75 to 0.91 for the various sub-scales.
Similarly, Beauchamp, Bray and Albinson (2002) reported internal consistency values
ranging from 0.72 (for a scale measuring motivational general-arousal) to 0.94 (for a
scale assessing motivational general-mastery) for a modified version of the SIQ.
Interestingly, a recent addition to measures in this field is a scale developed by
Hausenblas, Hall, Rodgers and Munroe (1999) designed to measure exercise-related
motivational and cognitive imagery. Initial psychometric analysis indicates that this test
is a promising tool for the study of imagery processes in aerobics exercisers.
Unfortunately, despite the preceding progress in imagery measurement, a number of
conceptual and methodological issues remain in this field. For example, even though
evidence has accumulated from neuroimaging techniques that imagery is a
multidimensional construct, most imagery tests in sport and exercise psychology rely on
a single imagery scale score. Also, few of these tests have an explicit theoretical rationale
despite the availability of sophisticated models of imagery (e.g., see Kosslyn, 1994).
Finally, much of the psychometric evidence cited in support of imagery tests in sport
psychology comes from the research teams that developed the tests. A brief summary of
other issues in the field is contained in Box 5.5.

Box 5.5 Thinking critically about imagery tests in sport psychology

Many tests of imagery abilities and imagery use are available in sport psychology (see
Hall, 1998; Moran, 1993). Which one should you use? Although the answer to this
question depends partly on the degree to which the test matches your specific research
requirements (e.g., are you studying visual or kinaesthetic imagery or both?), it also
depends on psychometric issues. These issues are expressed below as critical thinking
questions.

• If the psychometric adequacy of the imagery test is unknown, how would you assess its
  reliability? What value of a reliability coefficient is conventionally accepted as
  satisfactory by psychometric researchers?


• How would you establish the construct validity of an imagery test in sport? Specifically,
  what other measures of this construct would you use to establish the “convergent
  validity” of the test? Also, how would you establish the “discriminant validity” of the
  test (i.e., what measures should your test be unrelated to statistically)?


• If you were designing an imagery test for athletes from scratch, what precautions would
  you take to control for response sets (e g social desirability) or acquiescence (i e the

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