Transcultural validation of the "revised sport motivation scale" (SMS-II) in Arabic language: Exploratory study on motivation in sport for a sample of Tunisian Athletes

Background Sports performance is the result of an interaction of several variables, such as physical, technical, and psychological. The ability of athletes to use motivation, is an important predictor to achieve high performance in sport. SMS-II comprised 18 elements to measure six behavioral control factors. Aim This study aims to validate an Arabic version of the revised sports motivation scale-II (SMS-II) and measure the psychometric properties of factorial structure, internal reliability, construct validity, and sensitivity. Methods A total of 780 athletes from different disciplines (432 men, 348 women; mean age = 18.97 years) participated in this study. Athletes voluntarily responded to the version of SMS-II. Factorial validity was established by principal component analysis. Both exploratory (EFA; N = 390; males: 52.6%; females: 47.4%; [13-18] = 172; [19-30] = 218) and confirmatory (CFA; N = 390; males: 58.2%; females: 41.8%; [13-18] = 247; [19-30] = 143) analyses were examined. Results The 18 SMS-II items revealed perfect reliability (McDonald's omega = 0.841, Cronbach's alpha = 0.858, Gutmann's r = 0.952) and good temporal stability (ICC = 0.960, 95% CI = 0.915-0.980; r = 0.935, 95% CI = 0.889-0.963 at p < 0.001) over 4-week period. The CFA adjustment indices were perfect. Conclusion The results tended to clarify all indices as perfect adjustments to the theoretical model, ensuring the confirmation of factor structure and construction validity regarding the Tunisian sports workforce.