EXAMINATION OF THE FACTORIAL VALIDITY OF THE GROUP ENVIRONMENT QUESTIONNAIRE

The purpose of this study was to test the hypothesized factor-structur e of the Group Environment Questionnaire (GEQ) with confirmatory facto r analysis and to ascertain the degree of factorial invariance across gender and across type of sport (team, individual). Additionally, the underlying theoretical structure on which the GEQ was developed was ex amined by fitting the data to alternative hierarchical factor structur es. These models were tested with GEQ data collected on 740 high schoo l varsity athletes (426 males, 314 females). It was shown that the mal es and females had different factor structures and that neither group exhibited the hypothesized structure. Attempts to fit the data to a tw o-factor and a second-order hierarchical factor model were unsuccessfu l. Finally, exploratory factor analysis did not produce a satisfactory four-factor solution. It was concluded that the data from this sample do not support the hypothesized four-factor structure of the GEQ and that further examination of the factor structure of this instrument is required.