Development and preliminary validation of the Communal Coping Strategies Inventory for Competitive Team Sports

Abstract

ObjectivesThe study of how team sport athletes cope with stress in a collective way (i.e., communal coping, Lyons, Mickelson, Sullivan, & Coyne, 1998) is recent in sport. To date no questionnaire has been created to assess the specific communal coping strategies that team sport athletes use to cope collectively. The purpose of this study was therefore to develop and validate a questionnaire measuring communal coping at the team sport level (i.e., the Communal Coping Strategies Inventory for Competitive Team Sports - CCSICTS). MethodStudy 1 focused on creating items for the CCSICTS and tested their clarity and applicability. Study 2 tested the factorial structure of the CCSICTS with a sample of 371 Sport Science students. Study 3 examined the convergent validity of the questionnaire with other concepts such as affect, individual coping and cohesion. ResultsStudy 1 resulted in the development of an initial pool comprising 66 items. The results of Study 2 showed that a model with 36 items fit the data well. These items measured 12 coping strategies, 11 of which are grouped into four higher-order dimensions. Study 3 showed congruent links between communal coping and tested concepts. ConclusionThe CCSICTS is the first known measure specifically created to capture the singularity of communal coping in team sports. The validation of this tool allows new investigations of communal coping mechanisms through quantitative studies.