Development and Validation of a Team Attributional Style Questionnaire

The purpose of the study was to develop a psychometrically sound team attributional style questionnaire. A four-phase questionnaire development protocol was employed. In the first phase, Rees. Ingledew, and Hardy's (2005) four-dimension attribution model (i.e., controllability, stability, globality. and universality) was adopted to guide item generation. Phase two consisted of the development of the questionnaire and the assessment of the content validity of the items. In phase three, the reliability and validity of the newly developed questionnaire was assessed using a multitrait-multimethod (MTMM) confirmatory factor analysis on a sample of 240 athletes. The results indicated an acceptable fit between the four-factor model and data. Phase four assessed the criterion validity of the measure using the partial least squares (PLS) structural modeling technique. A sample of 198 athletes completed the new questionnaire and the Group Environment Questionnaire (GEQ; Carron, Widmeyer, & Brawley, 1985). The four-factor attributional style model accounted for 19% of the variation for Group Integration-Task cohesion and 15% of the variance for Individual Attractions to Group-Task cohesion. Issues related to assessing team attributional style are discussed and future research directions are recommended.