The study of anxiety, specifically its relations with sociodemographic variables, has been fruitfull in sport psychology research. This study aimed to investigate athletes’ sport anxiety regarding differences in gender and sport played. An application of structural equation modeling was made, with 601 Portuguese athletes. From them 172 (28.6%) were female and 429 (71.4%) were male. They competed in a variety of individual (e.g., athletics, climbing, orienteering, surfing, swimming, tennis; 42.6%) and team sports (e.g., basketball, handball, rugby, soccer, volleyball; 57.4%). Participants’ age ranged from 12 to 47 years (M = 17.44 years; SD = 4.99). After testing the measurement invariance of the first and second-order models, across gender and type of sport (individual vs. team), latent mean comparisons were investigated and Cohen’s d (1988) statistic was computed to obtain the corresponding effect sizes (Kline, 2016). Significant differences were detected between male and female athletes and between individual and team sports. Female and individual sports athletes presented higher levels of general sports anxiety. The results of this research provided evidence that anxiety is appraised differently by athletes based on their gender and type of sport.

Sport represents an important achievement domain, where fear of failure and anxiety are permanently present. The present study aimed to examine the relationship between fear of failure and anxiety in sport contexts. A total of 405 athletes completed the Performance Failure Appraisal Inventory and the Sport Anxiety Scale-2. In this study, a structural equation modelling was used to test this relationship. The results gathered, provided evidence that fear of failure construct has a direct and positive influence on sport anxiety. Furthermore, and consistent with previous studies, a relationship between fear of failure and anxiety was found, indicating that athletes with higher levels of fear of failure displayed a tendency of having greater anxiety levels. These findings highlights the importance of fear of failure in sport contexts, especially as a predictor of sport anxiety in athletes.

The Performance Failure Appraisal Inventory (PFAI) is a multidimensional measure of threat appraisals associated with one's fear of failure. Whilst emerging research has supported the validity and reliability of the PFAI with North American and British sport participants, its psychometric proprieties remain untested within Portuguese samples. This study examined the psychometric proprieties of the PFAI with a sample of 556 Portuguese athletes. A confirmatory factor analysis was employed to test whether the proposed multi-factorial structure of the PFAI fits well the Portuguese data. All factors displayed good internal consistency, convergent validity, and discriminant validity. Multi-group analysis revealed cross-validity and the models' invariance. The correlations between fear of failure and sport anxiety measures revealed evidence of its concurrent validity. The PFAI appears to be a psychometrically sound measure and a valid and reliable tool for assessing fear of failure in Portuguese sport contexts.