Development and Initial Testing of the “Personality Potential” Questionnaire for Athletes

Abstract

The study focuses on the development and primary validation of the Personality Potential Questionnaire for Athletes. The study involved 429 members of Russian national teams in various sports aged 17 to 40 years. Psychodiagnostic instruments: questionnaire "Personality Potential" (author's questionnaire), "Self-Actualization Test", "Subjective Control Level", "Hardiness Survey", “Purpose-in-Life Test”, “Test of General Self-Efficacy”, questionnaire "Facilitator — Mediator — Moderator”, method "Express-diagnostics of the tendency to affective behavior". The results showed that the scales of the "Personality Potential" questionnaire have asymmetry and kurtosis values less than unity, which shows normality of the distribution at an acceptable level. The exploratory factor analysis was carried out by a method of factorization of the main axis (PAF), oblique rotation Oblimin; 5 factors were allocated: involvement, meaningfulness, internalizing, independence, positivity. The final model of the author's questionnaire was confirmed by confirmatory factor analysis, priority was given to the higher order model, CFI = .900, SRMR = .047 and RMSEA = .032 fit indices. Retest reliability was assessed using correlation analysis (by Spearman): on the general personality scale p = .850, inclusion p= 0.867, meaningfulness p = .603, internalizing p = 690, positivity p = .728, independence p = .554, significance level of all indicators p < .001. Discriminant validity showed that the scales of the developed questionnaire were not related to other techniques that were not part of the personality construct. Factor validity was obtained by Principal components method using Oblimin's oblique rotation: the scale load of the “Meaningfulness” scale was .809; “Inclusion” scale .592; “Independence” scale .756; “Internality” scale .574; “Positivity” scale .610. The data were statistically processed using SPSS Statistics 23, Jamovi 2.2.5 and RStudio. The developed questionnaire “Personality Potential” is a reliable psychodiagnostic tool and can be recommended for testing the components of personality potential.