Psychometric Properties of the Chinese version of Situational Motivational Scale for Physical Education Students of Sports department

This study assessed the psychometric features of the Chinese version of the Situational Motivational Scale (SMS) from a cross-cultural perspective. 758 Chinese PE university students of the sports department (boy 52.6%, n = 357; female 52.9%, n = 401) completed the forward-backward translation-based SMS Chinese version. Using confirmatory factor analysis, the psychometric features of the 16-item SMS were examined (CFA). GFI = 0.96, CFI = 0.98, TLI = 0.97, RMSEA = 0.04) after incorporating two residual covariance for items loaded on the same factor and internal consistency. The alphas of the scales, according to Cronbach, were between 0.83 and 0.95. The composite reliability (CR) was between 0.87 and 0.95, and the AVE ranged from 0.69 to 0.77 for the subscales. The results give empirical evidence that the Chinese version of the SMS has sufficient psychometric characteristics for gauging motivation among Chinese PE university students in the sports department.