Evaluation and Adaption of the Trier Inventory for Chronic Stress (TICS) for Assessment in Competitive Sports.

Jeffrey Sallen,Florian Hirschmann,Christian Herrmann

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00308

Jeffrey Sallen, Florian Hirschmann + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00308

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Abstract

The demands of a career in competitive sports can lead to chronic stress perception among athletes if there is a non-conformity of requirements and available coping resources. The Trier Inventory for Chronic Stress (TICS) (Schulz et al., 2004) is said to be thoroughly validated. Nevertheless, it has not yet been subjected to a confirmatory factor analysis. The present study aims (1) to evaluate the factorial validity of the TICS within the context of competitive sports and (2) to adapt a short version (TICS-36). The total sample consisted of 564 athletes (age in years: M = 19.1, SD = 3.70). The factor structure of the original TICS did not adequately fit the present data, whereas the short version presented a satisfactory fit. The results indicate that the TICS-36 is an economical instrument for gathering interpretable information about chronic stress. For assessment in competitive sports with TICS-36, we generated overall and gender-specific norm values.

Highlights

There is a broad base of evidence-based knowledge concerning stress and its negative impact on health as well as on the competitiveness of humans (Dougall and Baum, 2001; Elfering et al, 2017; Gerber and Schilling, 2017; Siegrist, 2017; Von Dawans and Heinrichs, 2017)
The low Comparative Fit Index (CFI) and Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI) values indicated cross loadings of the items, which is why in model 2 all items were specified to load on all the factors as part of an exploratory structural equation model
This model 2 achieved a good adjustment to the data (χ2 = 1349.25, df = 1119, p < 0.001, CFI = 0.961, TLI = 0.944, Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) = 0.035)

Summary

Introduction

There is a broad base of evidence-based knowledge concerning stress and its negative impact on health as well as on the competitiveness of humans (Dougall and Baum, 2001; Elfering et al, 2017; Gerber and Schilling, 2017; Siegrist, 2017; Von Dawans and Heinrichs, 2017). Previous research has shown that chronic stress in particular, as opposed to acute stress, is associated with sustained adverse health effects (Schulz and Schlotz, 1999; Dougall and Baum, 2001; Becker et al, 2004; Serido et al, 2004; Fries and Kirschbaum, 2009).

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