TESTING THE SIMPLEX ASSUMPTION UNDERLYING THE SPORT MOTIVATION SCALE - A STRUCTURAL EQUATION MODELING ANALYSIS

Self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 1985) suggests that motivation al orientation or regulatory styles with respect to various behaviors can be conceptualized along a continuum ranging from low (a motivation ) to high (intrinsic motivation) levels of self-determination. This pa ttern is manifested in the rank order of correlations among these regu latory styles (i.e., adjacent correlations are expected to be higher t han those more distant) and is known as a simplex structure. Using res ponses from the Sport Motivation Scale (Pelletier et al., 1995) obtain ed from a sample of 857 college students (442 men, 415 women), the pre sent study tested the simplex structure underlying SMS subscales via s tructural equation modeling. Results confirmed the simplex model struc ture, indicating that the various motivational constructs are empirica lly organized from low to high self-determination. The simplex pattern was further found to be invariant across gender. Findings from this s tudy support the construct validity of the SMS and have important impl ications for studies focusing on the influence of motivational orienta tion in sport.