A002: Developing an Instrument to Measure Perceived Costs in PhysicalEducation

Background/Purpose: Expectancy-value theorists believe that students' motivation hinges on their beliefs regarding their potential for academic success and the significance they attribute to the task at hand. Cost is typically conceptualized as a subcomponent of value and represents students’ perceptions of what they must give up to succeed or engage in a task. To date, the concept of cost has received scant attention and there has been no established instrument in physical education (PE). This study was designed to develop and validate an instrument to measure perceived costs in PE. Method: There were two waves of data collection. In wave one, 144 students (mean age=13.8 years) from one middle school in Haikou, China completed a designed 12-item perceived cost questionnaire adapted from Jiang et al. (2018) measuring effort cost (e.g., it takes too much of effort for me to do well in PE), opportunity cost (e.g., I have to give up other activities that I like to do well in PE), ego cost (e.g., others would think worse of me if I failed to do well in PE) and psychological cost (e.g., working on PE class makes me feel stress). Both exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were conducted to examine the designed construct. In wave two, 255 students (mean age=13.5 years) from another school in Shenzhen, China completed an identical instrument and choice for future PE. The second confirmatory factor analysis and measurement invariance tests were conducted across the two schools. Results: We performed an exploratory factor analysis with the data in wave one. The four factors with eigenvalues greater than one accounted for a substantial portion (73.5%) of the total item variance. Results of the CFA yielded the satisfied fit indices: CFI = .981, SRMR = .041, and RMSEA = .055. We used data in wave two to replicate the former CFA to examine the underlying factor structure. Results revealed adequate model fit, CFI = .965, SRMR = .034, and RMSEA = .08. Measurement invariance tests supported the construct invariance across two schools. Costs were significantly and negatively correlated with choice for future PE, supporting the predictive validity of the instrument. Conclusions: The findings provided evidence to the conceptual validation of the four-factor structure of costs. This effort will enrich the understanding of the expectancy-value theory and extend its efficacy in PE.