Testing Psychometric Properties and Measurement Invariance of Basic Psychological Needs in the Digital Version of the Sport Scale

Motivation is an important field in sport because it is related to the satisfaction, psychological well-being, or adherence to sport. The Psychological Need Satisfaction in Exercise Scale (PNSE) is one of the questionnaires that assess motivation from the Self-Determination Theory. Online tools are growing because of the advantages that they offer. The PNSE has been validated in different populations but never in its digital version. The aim of the present study was to analyze the psychometric properties of the digital version of the PNSE hosted on the MenPas platform. The current study included 1050 platform users aged 18 to 58 who engage in regular physical-sports activity. A confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) of the 18-item model was conducted, and invariance was performed according to gender and type of sport. The results indicated that the measurement model displayed a good fit to the data: (CFI = 0.93, TLI = 0.92, RMSEA = 0.08, SRMR = 0.06; df = 132; B-S p = 0.02–0.07): general sample (χ2 = 934.86, χ2/df = 7.08), female (χ2 = 699.94, χ2/df = 5.30), male (χ2 = 442.42, χ2/df = 3.35) individual sports (χ2 = 753.17, χ2/df = 5.71), and team sports (χ2 = 390.44, χ2/df = 2.96). Appropriate values of invariance, convergent validity, discriminant validity, and composite reliability were obtained. The digital version of the PNSE shows adequate psychometric properties and it could improve the data collection process in future investigations