Validation of the sport psychology professional quality of life scale

Scholars within the field of psychology have increasingly reflected on the cost of caring and the quality of life of people in helping professionals. Indeed, the balance between the positive and challenging aspects of the psychology profession has become central in this discourse. As such, researchers have recently examined the construct of Sport Psychology-Professional Quality of Life (SP-PQL; Quartiroli, Etzel, Knight, & Zakrajsek, 2018). This construct encompasses the positive and negative aspects characterising the sport psychology profession, which play an important role in the sustainability of a long-lasting career. In this presentation, we present the findings of a validation study aimed to explore the construct and convergent validity of the SP-PQL Scale, which was recently developed using a Delphi method (Quartiroli, Wagstaff, & Etzel, 2018). The SP-PQL Scale was developed to assess the challenges hindering the SP-PQL as well as the strategies to overcome these challenges, as experienced by sport psychology professionals (SPPs). A sample of N = 560 SPPs (47% females) between 21 and 79 years old (M = 39.9; SD = 12.1) completed the survey. Among these participants, 85% were practitioners and 13.6% were students. Their professional experience ranged between 1 and 49 years (M = 11.2; SD = 10) and about half of their time was dedicated to applied practice (45.2%) and the remaining to teaching (27.8%) and research (26.9%) related activities. Results from analyses examining the factor structure and psychometric properties of the measure will be presented.