Development and psychometric properties of the supporting mental health in sport instrument

Abstract

Mental health conditions are a significant global health concern. To address this concern, sport settings are increasingly being viewed as environments in which to support individual mental health and wellbeing. Not all sports settings are, however, conducive to supporting mental health. Efforts to improve mental health in sport settings are likely to be less effective if the club culture, policy, and environment do not promote behaviors known to support mental health. Understanding the extent to which sport clubs offer environments conducive to mental health and wellbeing is important for mental health initiatives targeting sport clubs. Currently and to our knowledge, there is no known instrument that captures member/participant perceptions of how supportive the sport setting is regarding mental health and wellbeing. This study explored the content validity, internal construct validity and external construct validity of the Supporting Mental Health in Sport Instrument (SMHSI) intended to measure the extent to which sport clubs provided a supportive environment for mental health promotion. A process of reliability analysis, principal component analysis and Rasch analysis was conducted confirming the psychometric fit of the items to the overall construct. The instrument could distinguish between two sport club environments providing different levels of mental health support, demonstrating external construct validity. The instrument can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of the sport club context to support mental health, to identify suitable club targets for mental health programs, to better determine training needs, or to better understand the impact of mental health programs on wider club contexts. Lay summary: Mental health promotion in sport clubs is becoming increasingly popular. The effectiveness of these promotion efforts may be compromised by the contexts in which they are delivered. This paper describes the properties of the Supporting Mental Health in Sport Instrument designed to measure the contextual support for the promotion of mental health in sport clubs.