Sport And Exercise Psychology: A Critical Introduction

highly intercorrelated, a fact which suggests that they are not all measuring the same
construct. Finally, physiological assessment of athletes is time-consuming and
inconvenient. For these reasons, researchers in sport psychology have tended to use self-
report rather than physiological instruments to measure anxiety states in athletes.

Self-report instruments

Given their simplicity, brevity and convenience, paper-and-pencil tests of anxiety have
proliferated in sport psychology research. Among the most popular self-report
instruments in this field are such trait anxiety measures as the “Sport Competition
Anxiety Test” (SCAT; Martens, 1977) and the “Sport Anxiety Scale” (SAS; R.E. Smith,
Smoll and Schutz, 1990) as well as such state anxiety tools as the “Competitive State
Anxiety Inventory-2” (CSAI-2; Martens, Burton, Vealey, Bump and Smith, 1990) and
the “Mental Readiness Form” (MRF; Krane, 1994). In general, these scales have focused
largely on the measurement of anxiety intensity in athletes rather than on how anxiety is
interpreted by them.

The “Sport Competition Anxiety Scale” (SCAT; Mortens, 1977)

The Sport Competition Anxiety Scale (SCAT) is a ten-item inventory which purports to
measure trait anxiety in sport performers. Parallel versions of this test are available for
children (aged 10–14 years) and for adults (of 15 years and above). Typical items include
“When I compete I worry about making mistakes” and “Before I compete I get a queasy
feeling in my stomach”. Respondents are required to indicate their agreement with each
item by selecting their preferred answer from the three categories of “hardly ever”,
“sometimes” and “often”. Reverse scoring is used on certain items (e.g., “Before I
compete I feel calm”) and overall test scores can range from 10 to 30. Internal
consistency coefficients range from 0.8 to 0.9 and test-retest reliability values cluster
around 0.77 (R.E.Smith et al., 1998). Validation studies suggest that the SCAT is mainly
a measure of somatic anxiety (ibid.). Evidence of convergent validity comes from studies
which show that the test is correlated moderately with various general anxiety
inventories. Overall, R.E. Smith et al. (1998) concluded that although the SCAT “has
been a very important research tool within sport psychology” (p. 117), it needs to be
revised as a multidimensional test, reflecting the distinction between somatic and
cognitive anxiety.

The “Sport Anxiety Scale” (SAS; R.E.Smith et al., 1990)

The “Sport Anxiety Scale” (SAS; R.E.Smith et al, 1990) is a sport-specific
multidimensional test of cognitive and somatic trait anxiety. It contains twenty-one items
which are divided into three sub-scales: somatic anxiety (nine items such as “I feel
nervous”), worry (seven items such as “I have self-doubts”) and a “concentration
disruption” (five items such as “My mind wanders during sport competition”) sub-scale.
Reliability data for this scale are encouraging, with internal consistency estimated at
between 0.88 (somatic anxiety), 0.87 (worry) and 0.69 (concentration-disruption) (Dunn,
Causgrove Dunn, Wilson, and Syrotuik, 2000) and test-retest figures at 0.77 for an inter-

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