Development of the Compulsive Exercising Scale for Extreme Sports Participants

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to develop a scale to measure extreme sports participants’ levels of compulsive exercising. There are a number of compulsive exercising scales; however, none of them is targeted for extreme sports participants, whose emotional responses differ from those of non-extreme sports participants. Five hundred extreme sports participants were involved in this study, which included literature analysis, expert review, and exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. Firstly, 95 items were selected from previous studies related to extreme sports and compulsive exercising. Secondly, nine experts scrutinized the content validity of the 95 items, and 82 items were found to be valid. Thirdly, the 82-item survey was initially administered to 253 participants for the purposes of exploratory factor analysis. Lastly, the 20-item survey that came out as a result of the 82 items being put through the exploratory factor analysis was distributed to the other 247 participants in the confirmatory factor analysis. In the final results, 16 items regarding the four factors of the “withdrawal symptom”, “attachment”, “struggle”, and “obsession” were confirmed. The factors used to measure extreme sports participants’ compulsiveness in this study reflect somewhat different dimensions from those developed in previous studies for non-extreme sports participants or exercisers. Only factors in the affective and behavioral dimensions are included in the present study’s scale, while factors in the cognitive or the combined cognitive, affective, and behavioral dimensions were investigated in previous studies. This explains the need for the present study.

“No Risk No Fun?”: Determinants of Satisfaction with Life in People Who Engage in Extreme and High-Risk Sports

“…This lack of ambiguity in the obtained results can be explained by the limitation of the presented study—the tool used to measure the tendency towards addiction. The scale used is only an experimental tool, not one aimed at accurately measuring addiction in extreme athletes, such as the scale proposed by Ahn, Cho, and So [ 37 ].…”

The Impact of Extreme Sports on the Individual and Society: A Short Introduction

“…Impact at individual level from a physiological perspective and in terms of building the personality. Especially at the beginning, research has focused on arguing for the negative effects depending on several variables, (gender, age, sports, etc) at physical level: high risk-taking levels produce lesions and even death [16,24,26,37], sleep disturbances [28], but also pathological personality disorders (narcissism, anxiety, neuroticism, addictions), corelated with compulsive and deviant behaviours (pathological abuse and addiction to drugs, alcohol, sport) [2], [14,15], [29], [38]. Recent studies have focused on the benefits on physical performance, mental health, and personality traits, on emotion management -courage, humility, fear [7,8], [10], [27], [40], [46], physical, emotional, and mental freedom [9], psychological recovery and emotional well-being [3], [25] even among people suffering from hyperkinetic disorders (ADHD) [42], self-control and stress management, self-knowledge and self-achievement [12], [21], [23], [31,32].…”